


Travelers in the Dark

by epkitty



Category: Pirates of the Caribbean (Movies), Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl (2003)
Genre: Angst, Blood and Gore, Drama, Explicit Sexual Content, Historical Accuracy, Historical Inaccuracy, M/M, Magic, Romance, Slash, Supernatural Elements, Suspension of Disbelief Required
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2012-02-19
Updated: 2012-03-01
Packaged: 2017-10-31 10:14:37
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,067
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/342880
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epkitty/pseuds/epkitty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Then the traveler in the dark/Thanks you for your tiny spark."</p><p>AU after "Curse of the Black Pearl": Norrington and Sparrow have been chasing and out-racing one another for years. But when one finally has the other all to himself, strange secrets are revealed, realities questioned, and hope embraced.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The ‘pumping chantey’ is ruthlessly swindled from a Newfoundland band called Great Big Sea. A Clean Song was written by someone. Not me. The first three verses of the myth song are credited to Jane Taylor, the fourth is a version used in the Yukon, but I made up the rest, for which I hope I will be forgiven. 
> 
> I must admit to some influence from ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’ as well as ‘The Golden Compass’ and also Neil Gaiman's 'Stardust.' Though none was consciously intended and I only recognized the similarities after the fact. 
> 
>  
> 
> **Suspension of disbelief required. ******
> 
> When I started this story, I really liked it. Now, I'm on Chapter 4 and thinking, ‘who the hell is going to read this far?’

Sunday, July 21, 1718 C.E.

 

The _Black Pearl_ made all speed to Tortuga in hopes of finding a safe berth to make repairs from the storm they’d only barely outrun the previous week, as well as earning a respite from British repression and a chance to squander their latest earnings after escaping yet another brush with the Navy barely three days before— though without any sign of a favored adversary.

But just as the first stars winked into view in the east and land came into sight in the west, a shout came down from Marty in the crow’s nest, “Sail, ho!”

Heads turned, men scrambled, and Jack left the wheel to Cotton as he and Gibbs raced to the bow for a look.

“Small one,” Gibbs muttered at first inspection.

Jack made a noncommittal noise low in his throat and fished out his telescope from some hidden pocket. He listed forward and back as he fixed the fast little ship in his sights, eyeing the flag she flew.

Jack lowered the glass from his eye and a slow smile lifted the corners of his mouth, revealing the glints of gold and silver beyond. “I’ll be, if it ain’t my old friend John Rackham.”

“Calico Jack?” Gibbs asked, the worry gone, a smile lighting his gruff face. “Great man! He’s always good for a tale…” Quick eyes searched the distant sails again, then flashed back to Sparrow. “I’ll get the rum.”

Sparrow’s voice carried over the wind, ordering to take in sails and drop anchor, to let the _Curlew_ catch up. Faces alighted at the name of the ship, and the men set to work with haste, eager for a glimpse of Calico Jack, and to make trade with the other sailors.

When the sloop grew near, the tall figure at the bow could be seen, easily discernible with his colorful cotton shirt and the striped breeches he was named for. “Jack Sparrow!” he crowed, fighting to be heard over the wind and the distance, “I heard you were dead!” 

“But seeing is believing, eh?” Sparrow yelled back.

The men laughed as the _Curlew_ was finally brought alongside the _Black Pearl_ and Jack Sparrow jumped with a somersault to the deck of the smaller ship, and landed with a thump on his arse.

Captain John Rackham smiled and heaved the man up by the scruff of his ragged coat. They embraced and laughed again before handsome Calico Jack could finally admit, “I’ve been looking for you—ever since I heard you were alive; no worries, now; how about we set down to a feast above on your _Pearl_ , for we’ve meat aplenty… though we’re somewhat lacking in spirits.” This last was said with a pointed tip of the head to indicate his crew, who watched with interest.

“I’ve heard o’ this Jack Sparrow, now,” a short crewman complained, bold as anything, and stepped up into Sparrow’s space to eye him critically. “He cannae be trusted,” the Irish brogue decided, and Sparrow eyed the cleavage in front of him.

“Gibbs won’t approve of this one,” he muttered, and John Rackham bellowed a deep and hearty laugh, swinging his arm about the woman and drawing her tight.

“This here is my dear Anne,” he said with a rakish leer, “and old Joshamee Gibbs is still kicking about, is he?” John Rackham tilted his head back to eye the crew aligned on the starboard gunwale of the _Pearl_. “So he is! Joshamee Gibbs! Have a drop to spare a poor sailor?”

“Cap’n!” he grinned down, “More than a drop, aye!”

With this, cheers went up on all sides and every man and woman aboard the _Curlew_ quickly scaled the readily lowered rope ladders to board the _Pearl_ , bringing with them hanks of meat and barrels of fruit and so many good things that they had to go back for more. The crew of the _Pearl_ made the deck ready, laying out tarpaulins and old canvas to recline on while Gibbs himself portioned out the rum.

Anne Bonny and Anamaria circled one another warily for the first half hour until the men were well into their cups and the two women found one another’s conversation the only discourse worth having. 

Calico Jack and Jack Sparrow let the most well-spoke men of their crews tell stories of their recent exploits while the two Captains sat companionably together, gorging themselves on goat meat and apples and rum.

Of a common disposition and equally peaceable men, the two Jacks got on famously and they drank themselves to slumber on deck with the rest of the men while the moon shone high and distant above them and the musicians played on.

Late the next morning, they were roused by the Caribbean heat and rough kicks from Anne and Anamaria who shared their disgust of drunk hooligans. Still, the captains scrounged around for the bottles with anything left, and a few gulps of the spicy liquor invigorated their good tempers and sporting banter.

After they’d gotten some food in their bellies alongside the rum, the captains stood side-by-side on the _Pearl_ ’s poop deck, and Jack Sparrow asked his guest, “What brings you to Tortuga now, mate?”

“Didn’t I tell you, Jack? I came looking for you!”

“Ah,” Jack said, stock-still a moment as he searched his memory and then flashed a smile, “So ye did.”

“I’ve a present I thought you might enjoy.”

“A present?” Sparrow asked, his narrow dark eyes expressing his depth of suspicion, for he was a man who’d known previous gift-horses to trample him down.

Sensing the caution, Rackham laughed; he seemed over-fond of doing so, but was most handsome when he did it. “Well I suppose if you don’t like, I shall keep it, but heaven knows what I’d do with it.” He turned and addressed his quartermaster. “O’Crean, take Anne here and go fetch the Captain’s present.”

The fat, jovial man parted regrettable company from Gibbs and his flask to climb back to his own ship, Anne Bonny well ahead of him.

“Come, Jack,” Rackham then begged, “I can’t wait for you to see this!” And he persuaded Jack Sparrow to descend to the _Curlew_ ’s deck.

They stood side by side and a few men of either ship leaned over the rail above to watch the proceedings. Sparrow couldn’t help swaying in place, as though ready to bolt upon sight of a nightmare.

And what came escorted out of the hold nearly was.

“Jack Sparrow, I give you Commodore Norrington.”

Jack’s eyes bulged. “Bugger.”

“Oh hell,” Norrington sighed.


	2. A Week's Parole

Norrington rolled his eyes heavenward and still managed to look imposing with his hands shackled tight in front of him. And he looked remarkably well for a prisoner: his uniform was almost clean – if not freshly pressed – and intact, with the lone exception of his wig. Instead, his brown hair was just long enough to be tied back with a velvet ribbon, no doubt a gift from Calico Jack, and a few days’ worth of beard decorated his normally weak-looking chin.

“Ah, O’Crean,” Rackham said with a snap of his fingers as though just remembering a trifle. “His effects are in my cabin, if you would be so kind?”

But Anne, who was decidedly quicker, said, “If it gets him off this ship, I’ll fetch ‘em myself, so I will,” and she disappeared through the hatch.

Then the men were left with nothing to do but look at one another.

Norrington shunned all gazes but one. “Sparrow,” he said, a nasal annoyance seeping into his otherwise deep tone.

“ _Captain_ ,” Jack said, because it was habitual, because it was safe. “ _Captain_ Sparrow, if you please.”

“Captain Sparrow, then,” Norrington yielded, “I look forward to your more familiar brand of insanity.” His green eyes pierced Jack’s dark ones. “Please get me off this ship.”

Jack smiled and stepped into Norrington’s space, slanting forward to silently appraise him, dark eyes underlined by a doubtful frown as he examined Norrington’s hat and hair and face and neck and then down, stepping back to eye shoulders and chest. He took a turn about the man, the tails of his dark coat swinging as he circled his present.

Then Sparrow marched over to John Rackham, who’d been smiling bemusedly the whole time. Jack stuck out his hand and Rackham met it in a firm grip. “I thank ye for the lovely present, John. No doubt you’re right; you wouldn’t know the first thing to do with it, would you?”

Rackham smiled and slipped an arm about the returned Anne. “Well, Jack, truth be told, you’re right. I don’t know if you’re out to ransom the man or maroon him or,” and he laughed at this, “just drive him mad, but whatever it is, I wish you the best, as always. May the wind be at your back, Jack.”

They shook hands once more. “Put your right foot forward,” Jack soberly told his old friend, “as always.” Then Jack’s head tilted like a bird’s as he regarded his unexpected prize. “Commodore Norrington,” he said, again stepping closer than would be considered polite or comfortable, “Will ye give t’ me your parole?”

Norrington failed to hide his surprise, as he glanced about at the pirates on both decks. “For how long?”

“Let’s say you give us a week, mate. No tryin’ to escape, no,” and he fluttered his hands, “sendin’ messages or complainin’ overmuch. In return, I won’t lock you up, I’ll feed you proper, an’ you can ‘ave your shiny weapons back, savvy?”

Norrington was all seriousness at the end of this little speech. “I’m to give my parole to a pirate? Might I remind you, _Captain_ Sparrow, that you are not known for your candor?”

Jack finally grinned and swayed backward, spreading his hands as if to say, ‘look, nothing up my sleeves.’ His grin grew flirtatious as he eyed the man up and down and ignored the challenge. “As fine as you look in them irons, Commodore, I’m willin’ t’take ‘em off.”

The two men regarded one another for a silent moment, everyone watching the wordless showdown.

Eventually, it was Norrington who broke the gaze. He cast his eyes downward and nodded once curtly.

“O’Crean, was it?” Jack asked, sashaying over to Rackham’s quartermaster. He waved his hand in Norrington’s general direction. “If you would be so kind?”

As the fat man waddled over to the accompaniment of jingling keys to uncuff the prisoner, Anne Bonny handed over Norrington’s weapons, which were wrapped about with an old strip of leather. Jack took them, examined them quickly and then handed them to the newly freed Commodore.

After a cursory massage of his wrists, Norrington tried to take the bundle, but Jack didn’t let go. “Remember,” Jack told him, eyes dark and far from playful as his rum-flavored breath coasted over Norrington’s face, “you’re mine now.”

His expression haughty, Norrington glanced up to the black ship that shadowed them. “I assure you, I am not apt to forget it.”

“Well then, mate,” Jack grinned, “welcome aboard.”

= = = = =

Norrington did his best to stay out of the way while Sparrow ordered the ship to make ready. He stood in the lee of one of the aft staircases, watching the men weigh anchor and run out the sails.

To the crew’s disgust, the ship was turned about as Sparrow checked his compass and ordered them to make for a port other than Tortuga. Norrington endured the hard looks from the men who, no doubt, blamed him for the course change and had no reason to look upon him favorably in the first place.

Much to Norrington’s relief, as soon as the ship was facing the open sea and everything was well underway, Jack descended from the quarterdeck and ordered, “Commodore, with me,” as he breezed by and through the doors to the captain’s cabin, which glittered and swayed as much as Sparrow himself. Gold and jeweled artifacts from all over the world hung from black beams and adorned black walls. One table was heaped with the remains of the previous night’s dinner, and another smaller desk was covered in maps, charts, and other navigator’s paraphernalia. Unlit lanterns swung side to side and Norrington carefully ducked or sidestepped each one.

Sparrow smiled a wicked smile and gestured that Norrington should sit.

Debating the pros and cons of refusing such an invitation, Norrington finally sat in the sturdy chair, and couldn’t help but eye the food greedily.

“Oh, by all means, help yourself. I trust Captain Rackham didn’t let you starve?” After discarding his coat and hat, Sparrow reclined in a similar chair and propped his feet one over the other atop the table, carefully toeing a bowl of wrinkled grapes out of his way.

“Starve, no,” Norrington told him between bites of whatever looked most edible and least fly-ridden. “He was a decent host, but I quickly tired of his sport.”

“And what sport would that be?” Jack asked off-handedly, polishing an apple on a ragged shirt cuff.

Norrington shrugged and finished chewing a scrap of scorched goat meat. “I don’t think he’s ever met a Commodore before. He insisted upon dining in the brig with me, the bars between us like a Confessional.” He shrugged and after a brief hesitation, accepted a cloudy glass bottle from the pirate and drank.

Sparrow avidly watched the bobbing Adam’s apple and cleared his throat before asking, “And what confessions would a man like you ‘ave to make, eh?”

“None that Rackham wanted to hear. He was concerned with little but tall tales.” Norrington set the bottle aside and met Sparrow’s curious eyes before deciding to elaborate. “He seemed enchanted with the idea of my pursuit.”

“Of pirates?”

“Of you.” Norrington looked away and ate some more before adding, “He thought it sweeping and romantic, I suppose: so many close calls and escapes and all that. He lives for adventure. I think he believes this to be just another chapter in our long and fruitless rivalry.”

“Is it not?” Jack asked, eyes dark and questioning.

Norrington regarded him at length before answering, always hesitant with his words. “No. I’m a dead man, Sparrow.”

Booted feet fell to the floor and Jack sat forward, elbow propped on the table. “Now, what would you mean by that?”

“How do you think Rackham acquired a prisoner such as myself? You know him: he’s not a violent man, the _Curlew_ is fast, and he has sense enough to avoid the Royal Navy.”

“Well then, won’t you enlighten old Jack?”

Norrington indulged in one last fortifying gulp of rum and then sat back, as though all hunger and thirst had been abruptly quenched. “There was a storm.”

“Aye, two weeks past.”

Norrington nodded. “It interrupted our pursuit of a pirate vessel. There was very little left. Of either ship. As far as I know, I alone survived. The wreckage carried me to an island, a little spit of land with few comforts to offer a man. The _Curlew_ came to collect water and Rackham regarded me quite as a pet I think. Though he treated me well enough. And I’m dead, Captain Sparrow. To the Navy. To the world. To anyone that should ever think to worry over me.”

“What would you ‘ave me do, then?”

Norrington gestured to the ocean beyond the windows. “Leave me to the sharks.”

“Are you daft?”

“No.” He sighed, and his ghostly green eyes were empty. “Just tired.”

“You’re madder than I am. We aren’t friends, mate,” Jack said with a low laugh, “but this chase ain’t near over.” He smiled, and the expression finally reached kohl-darkened eyes, and the pirate examined Norrington’s finery, from buckled shoes to delicate sword to feathered tricorne. “Parole may have been given, but as you say, I’m a pirate, and my word don’t mean much.”

“That does not mean my word is equally worthless,” Norrington spat out. “I’ll not betray my oath to you; I’ll not escape.”

“Not for the next week, anyway.”

“You’re a perfect scoundrel, Sparrow.”

“Thank you.” Sparrow jumped up then and donned his coat and hat. “Now, I’ve duties to attend to. You’re free to roam the ship and I’ll warn my men off your back. Still, I wouldn’t cross any of them if I were you.” And with that he was gone, the door slamming behind him.

Norrington blinked at the closed doors, as though uncertain how he ever came to find himself alone in Jack Sparrow’s cabin aboard the _Black Pearl_ , a ship no longer cursed, but not a normal ship either. Norrington scuffed his heel across the decking under his feet, and though he felt no ready response, he did not doubt the ship lived. It was a strange thing, an unnatural thing, like Norrington himself. 

He shuddered and laid his hat aside, knowing that if he stayed long enough, Jack would see what he was and – seeing it – would want it for himself.

= = = = =

The day began to shorten and Norrington still chose the prudence of solitude within the cabin, rather than the sour and threatening looks of a crew that had no reason to accept him, and every reason not to.

He had carefully laid aside coat and waistcoat, along with his hat. He hung these on the ready hooks upon the wall, and on the floor underneath he set his buckled shoes, which housed his rolled up hose. For lack of companionship, he’d taken to his weapons. He cleaned and polished with the obsessive care of a soldier who knew his life depended on these tools. He’d had no qualms about searching Jack’s cabin and he used what he found to swab the barrel of the pistol, to clean out the pan. He inspected each bullet, and confiscated a small bit of powder from an already depleted store under the shelf-like bed. He frowned at the salt-pitted marks on the sword and knew he’d have to get it sharpened. When, finally, that was done, he took up a bottle, and sat on the pillowed bench beneath a leaded window where he could look out to the wild sea.

Sword and pistol stood within reach, leaning in the corner beside him.

Hours passed, but still he did not move, and when the sun finally began to set, Norrington opened the window and leaned out to feel the salt spray on his face. Then he stood and took the fancy clothes from their hooks, and the shoes with their hose, and he tossed them out the window and watched the sea suck them down.

“What in bleedin’ ‘ell d’you do that for?” Sparrow asked, the black doors to the cabin slamming shut behind him.

“I’m not a Commodore anymore,” Norrington answered. He did not seem at all perturbed or embarrassed that Sparrow had witnessed his burst of temper. He stood straight and proud and regarded his shocked captor. “Well. If I’d known that all I had to do was throw my clothes out a window to shut you up, I would have done it years ago.”

Sparrow regained only enough sense to stutter, “I… what…” He looked with wide eyes from Norrington to the window, as if hoping the lost objects would magically reappear. “You _are_ daft!”

“I’m several masts short of a galleon, you’re right. I do hope you’ll have the sense to get rid of me at your first opportunity.” 

“Get rid of you?” Sparrow still stood motionless as he had upon first sight of the half-dressed Commodore disposing of his finery. “You mean…?”

“Never mind. I’m sure you’ll wish to hold me for the week at least. That’s fine. Dinner, then?” he asked. “I’ll help.” And he picked up two trays and nodded at the doors.

Sparrow opened them, and watched with disbelief as Norrington carried the trays out on deck for the men.

Before long, the food was distributed, and Norrington sat on the bottom step of the starboard stairway that led to the quarterdeck, and he gnawed a bit of salted pork and kept a wary eye on the men who returned the favor, muttering amongst themselves and looking over their shoulders at the Navy man.

Sparrow waltzed over to his prisoner and didn’t know what to do or say. “Budge over.”

Norrington shifted and Sparrow reclined beside him, legs outstretched and crossed at the ankle, as elbows rested on the step behind them. “Good spread, eh? Rackham knows ‘ow to keep a man ‘appy.”

“From what I saw,” Norrington replied, “he knew a fair bit more about keeping a woman happy.”

Jack laughed lustily and nodded. “John Rackham’s always ‘ad an eye for the ladies,” he agreed. But he quickly grew solemn. “And you?”

Norrington shrugged and cast his eyes about the deck as he thought. “You’ve still got repairs to make. I can help with those.”

“And why would you want to be doing that?”

“Well, Sparrow, you tell me. Shall I sit alone in your cabin all day and night, gorging myself on your rum, sit about on deck all day and night avoiding your crew, or make myself bloody useful and not go out of my head with boredom as I did in that little cell for the past week?”

“When you put it like that, it makes a deal of sense,” Jack allowed. He looked skeptical.

“I was a midshipman, you know,” Norrington answered with a theatrical sigh. “I like to think I haven’t forgotten the basics.”

Sparrow’s dark gaze settled on Norrington’s strong hands, busy shredding the meat into strips. “No, I don’t suppose you ‘ave.”

= = = = =

“Commodore?”

Norrington groaned as something shook him to wakefulness.

“Bad place to fall asleep, lad,” a gruff voice warned.

“Gibbs,” Norrington recognized as he sat up from the steps. “Ugh.” He grumbled to himself and rubbed the kinks from his back. “You’re right, I can’t believe I fell asl…” He blinked into the night, tracking the passage of the stars. “What time is it?”

“Nearin’ midnight. Thought I’d just let you sleep; looked you needed it. But my shift’s over an’… I don’t want the boys to be tempted.”

Norrington looked about at the few men taking over the next watch, straggled here and there about the decks. None looked friendly. “I thank you, Mr. Gibbs.”

“Not at all. Go along to the Cap’n’s cabin, now; he’s expectin’ you.” He took a swig from his ever-present flask.

Norrington laughed and stood. “Not sure how to take that,” he muttered before issuing a kind ‘good night’ and heading into the lion’s den. 

He knocked out of consideration and – at Sparrow’s grunt of acknowledgement – he pulled a door open. The place was lit by a variety of lanterns, but the majority of them surrounded Jack where he worked at the smaller of the tables; with mariner’s compass at his elbow, he walked the two-legged metal divider across the nautical chart of the Caribbean set out before him.

Norrington circled round to stand behind and look over his shoulder.  
 Sparrow froze.

“That’s one of the better charts I’ve seen. Where did you come by it?”

Jack twisted round, hair baubles chiming. He gestured at himself and said, “Pirate.”

“Ah,” Norrington almost smiled, “Of course. How could I forget?” Then he pulled over a chair from the other table to sit beside his host. “Navigation is one of the most valuable skills on the seas. How did you come by it?”

“Picked it up, here and there,” Jack told him, resuming his work.

“Let me know if you need a hand.”

“You’re a sea artist too, I suppose?” Jack asked, dark eyes flitting up.

“Yes.”

“Where did you learn, then?”

“Oh, here and there.” Norrington smirked. “Do you have any rum about this cabin?”

“Silly question,” Jack told him, reaching down beside him to heft a half-full bottle from the floor. “’Ere. Don’t spill on the charts.”

“Course not,” Norrington agreed, escaping with his prize to the window seat again, watching the moon kiss the waves as he drank. “Calm seas tonight.”

“Aye.”

Encouraged that Jack was answering him, if only briefly, Norrington continued. “Have you a hammock to string up somewhere? I don’t dare brave the hold.”

Jack stopped his work, stood, fetched blackened netting from a trunk, and affixed it to the hooks between two support beams. “There. Don’t say I never did nothing for you.” The pirate captain resumed his seat and thought a moment before adding, “You can have the bunk, if you like. I don’t suppose Commodores kip much in those.” He gestured to the hammock, swaying sadly empty in midair.

“It’s all right,” Norrington said, and stood to return the rum to its place at Sparrow’s feet. He checked his motion as he crouched, at a level with Sparrow, to look him closely in the eye. “After all, I’m not a Commodore anymore.” Then, he finished his movement and stood.

Jack looked up at him, evaluating. “You’re not the man I thought you were.”

“Thank you.”

“You’re not going to murder me in me sleep, are you?”

Norrington smiled and shook his head. “No, Sparrow.” Then he saw the way Sparrow was looking at him, all wide dark eyes and parted lips. “What?”

Jack returned to his work and it seemed he spoke to the chart when he said, “You should smile more.”

Norrington turned away, smiled, and swung himself up into the hammock.

= = = = =

When – late into the darkest part of the night – Jack Sparrow turned in, he doused the lanterns, meandered his way to the narrow bed, and fell into the linen sheets fully clothed, only kicking off his boots.

He cast his dark eyes to the figure swaying silently in the shadows of his cabin, and found that sleep was a long time coming.

= = = = =

In the morning, the sun’s light shone through the window above Jack’s bed and woke him. He rolled out of his nest, and tiredly assembled himself, finding boots, coat, hat, smearing the stick of kohl around his eyes. It wasn’t until his hand landed on the latch that he realized the hammock was gone, and not a sign of the Commodore, or _former_ Commodore if he was to be taken at his word, was to be seen.

Jack stumbled backwards out of the room, discombobulated, and nearly tripped over his own feet on the deck. He turned around and squinted against the light, then reached up to work the black kohl into its usual cloudy pattern under his eyes to reduce the light that reflected from his high cheekbones. With an expression that conveyed all too well his confusion, he spun in a circle, regarding the men. They worked rather briskly, so Jack gathered that it had been Anamaria and not Gibbs who’d booted them out of bed that morning.

Along with their regular tasks, the crew had resumed work on repairs from the storm, none of which were pressing, but all of which were time-consuming. Jack nodded in vague approval, but had the itching sensation that he had missed something. He scaled the steps to where the steersman stood at the helm. “Ah, Mister Cotton,” he said with a bit of a grin to put his quarry at ease. “’Ave you seen the Commodore this fine morning?”

The parrot squawked, “Hoist the topmast!” and Cotton pointed up.

“Eh?” Jack asked.

Cotton again jabbed a gnarled finger at the rearmost mast that loomed above them, and Jack bent backward, squinting against the sun to see a man dressed all in white straddling the topmost yardarm, replacing the ragged tie lines that fed through the grommets and spars, lashing the square-rigged sail to the horizontal beam that supported it.

“’E _is_ daft,” Jack wondered with approval, and then sent his gaze over the rest of ship. “Anamaria!” he called, and skittered down the steps to accost her where she oversaw the men. “Darling,” he addressed upon closer confrontation. 

She frowned at him. “What is it?”

“That Commodore of mine; why is ‘e cavorting about up on the mizzenmast?”

“The stays need replacing, as if you di’nt know. I asked for volunteers.” She shrugged and turned to look up at the distant figure, nearly a hundred feet above deck. “No one else wanted the job, and he said he’d do it, and tell us how many grommets and spars need replacing as well.”

“Most, I imagine,” Jack muttered, also rearing back to again find the figure perched high above on the topgallant’s yardarm, edging ever nearer the tapered end.

“I don’t trust him, Jack.”

“Nor ‘ave you any reason to, luv. Now, where’s Gibbs? I need a word with ‘im.”

“None uh that, now,” she waved a sharp finger in his face and glared severely. “Why do we have him aboard this ship?”

“Well now,” Jack began, backing up as she stalked him down, “you know well as the rest o’ the crew ‘ow—” 

“An’ we shoulda set him off at Tortuga an’ been done with him, or better yet left him to Calico Jack’s gentlemanly mercies.” She backed Sparrow into the rail and leaned over him. “Now we’ve a Navy man on this boat and no good will come of it!”

Jack finally managed to slip sideways out of her reach and said, “Consider your complaint noted.”

= = = = =

Norrington delighted at the wind that battered him, and the sun that thawed the cold inside him. His fingers worked quickly at the ragged old lines as he pulled freshly tarred lengths of junk from the bundles tied to his belt. Whenever he felt himself slipping, he squeezed the yardarm tight, and the _Pearl_ shifted on the water to throw him back into balance. James Norrington smiled to himself and glorified in the straining of unused muscles and the unique bird’s perspective he had of the deck.

He hummed a short-haul chantey and dug his toes into the black canvas that shuddered and pulled in the wind.

= = = = =

Jack watched curiously as Norrington made his way about the rigging, replacing the stays and taking note of the condition of the sails while he was aloft. He was not fast or particularly graceful as he found his way along the yardarms and from mast to mast, but he was careful and skillful in the way of a man again finding muscles he had not had cause to use in a long time.

Sparrow grinned to himself and knew the man would be hurting later for this sudden burst of energy and industry, especially after a week of confinement and poor rations. 

Just after noon, when the day was hottest and the sun relentless, Jack looked down from his post at the wheel to see Norrington finally grounded again. The man stumbled as his bare feet met deck and the men laughed to see him so. But Jack could see their smiles and knew the laughter was not heartless.

He watched Norrington strip off his white shirt, leaving him in nothing but tight Navy breeches. His pale skin was blinding in the light. He draped the shirt over a barrel and used a ready line to drop a bucket to the water and haul it back up, hand over hand. Jack found himself watching the repetition of straining muscles as the body worked. Then Norrington grasped the full bucket in both hands and dumped it over his head, soaking brown hair until it seemed black, and gushing over a lean, muscular back. Norrington sputtered and shook his head like a dog. He let escape a tiny smile as Marty offered him a ladle of comparatively fresh water, which he carefully lifted to drink, spilling none of the precious commodity.

Norrington shielded his eyes as he surveyed the horizon and then pulled his shirt back on, where it clung to skin in wet patches and hung low to hide his white, wet breeches.

Jack tried not to drool and so licked his lips, struggling to pull his gaze from the alarming man on his ship. He was suddenly certain that taking him onboard had been the worst decision of his life, and a moment later – when that man ascended the steps to stand beside him – changed his mind and decided it was the best. “Commodore!—”

“Not Commodore anymore,” Norrington corrected as most of the men descended below to escape the worst of the heat, while only a few remained on deck to work the ship.

“What shall I call you, then?”

“‘Norrington’ will suffice.”

“Oh? But won’t you call me Jack?”

Norrington sent him a smirking look laced with sarcastic disbelief.

Jack grinned to see it. “Well then, Norrington, you can call me Captain, and don’t forget it.”

“Before I know it, you’ll have me sign my soul away on your articles and then I’ll be in real trouble.”

Sparrow laughed. “Aye, you’d make a fine addition, scuttling about the rigging. D’you know you’ve already got yourself a name among the crew?”

“Oh?”

“They’ve taken to calling you The Navy Man.”

“Flattering,” Norrington said, sarcasm surfacing in that nasal tone again.

Sparrow laughed. “More than you know.”   
= = = = =

That night, Norrington groaned like an old woman as he leaned against the rehung, swaying hammock and tried to climb into it.

Jack was not kind enough to hide his laughter. “Knew you’d pay for it later, didn’cha?”

“Oh God,” was all Norrington managed as he slumped over the hammock, silk shirt hanging loose around what turned out to be a tall and lanky figure when he wasn’t hung all about with lace and brocade and the gold braid of his rank. “I’m… going to sleep on the floor,” he decided, and slowly let himself down onto his knees and from there into what appeared to be a dead faint.

Jack leaned forward from his seat at the charts to examine him, poking his side with the toe of a scuffed boot. “You all right there, mate?”

“No.”

“Ah.” Jack stood and swayed until he found his feet and then disappeared from the cabin.

“Buggering fuck,” Norrington mumbled when he was alone. “I didn’t think it would hurt this much…” He reached one arm across his chest to rub at the opposing shoulder, but that hurt too, and he whined and whimpered and curled further into himself.

“Now then!” Jack announced in his salt-scratched voice as he threw the doors open, “I’ll see to you, Norrington. Up, c’mon – ugh, you’re a heavy bastard – up!”

Norrington continued to groan and mutter curses as Sparrow heaved under his armpits to drag him almost vertical. He fought to get his feet under him, but every muscle sent its howling complaint and refused to cooperate. “Just leave me, dammit.”

Jack caught the man when he fell and almost went down himself, but with a bear hug around the torso, he used their momentum to swing around and land the man in the bunk instead.

“Oof!” Norrington groaned, “you said no torture…”

“I never said nothing of the kind,” Jack insisted and then held a foul-smelling concoction to Norrington’s nagging mouth. Jack spoke for the pleasure of hearing his own voice as he attempted to force the vial of wicked medicine down Norrington’s throat. “I don’t recall no promises about torture, I on’y said I wouldn’t lock you up (which I ‘aven’t), I’d feed you proper (which I ‘ave), an’ that I’d give ye your shiny weapons back (which I did). Nothing about torture. ’Ere now!” he finally demanded, having yet to be successful. “This’ll calm yer muscles ye daft Navy man!”

“It smells disgusting!”

Jack growled, pushed Norrington back, straddled his thighs, squeezed his nose, and dumped the entire contents of the vial down the sputtering throat. “Ha!” he crowed at his eventual success, climbing off his victim. “Don’t spit it up, now! That’s good for what ails ye.”

“Only if good breath is what ails me,” Norrington growled, and then tried to lay still, for the bed was comfortable, if quite narrow.

“Right, off with your kit then.”

“What?”

Jack’s quick, spidery fingers were at Norrington’s waist and he undid the breeches in mere seconds. He pulled them by the knees after undoing the buttons up either thigh and successfully drew them off the long, pale legs. The shirt was much harder though, as Norrington had finally caught on, and he struggled valiantly to repel the attack.

“Give it up, now,” Sparrow grumbled as he tried to lift the white hem up over tightly crossed arms.

“No! I’ll not have you manhandling me, Sparrow!”

“Look, gimme the shirt or I’ll cut it off.”

“Blackguard!” Norrington spat.

“Prude.”

“Scalawag!”

“Pedant.”

“Pirate!”

“Prig.”

“Cheat.”

“Aye!” Jack agreed and attacked with tickling fingers until he could pull the shirt clean away, leaving a naked, laughing former Commodore in his bed. Jack tossed the shirt well out of reach, licked his lips, and attempted an unaffected air. “Now then, turn about on yer belly.”

Norrington finally recovered himself and sat up, bracing himself with locked elbows to glare at his captor. But now that he had nothing to cover himself, he didn’t cower or hide, belying his earlier modesty. “If you think—”

Sparrow held up another bottle and waggled it temptingly, as though it should mean something. “This’ll set your muscles right; now you can do your front if you like, but ye can’t reach yer own back, so you ‘ave three choices, right? I can leave you to your stuffy solitude and pain, I can rub this ‘ere miracle ointment on yer back, or I can call Anamaria in to see to it.”

“I wouldn’t let that witch within a cat’s length of my naked back.”

“Then turn over.”

Norrington looked as though he was about to refuse, but a sudden spasm wracked his body and he thumped down onto the bed with a high-pitched whine. “Oh fuck.”

“Turn about then,” Jack ordered.

More shrill keening, wordless this time, preceded Norrington’s final concession as he rolled to his stomach. He looked weak as a kitten as he let his open hands rest either side of his head, which was turned to one side, his face scrunched tight against the pain. His back heaved up and down with each breath and his whole body trembled from the day’s overexertion. 

“Like pulling teeth it is with you,” Jack muttered as he dumped the cool oil in a flowing stream on Norrington’s back.

He jerked and shivered at the shock of it and then Jack’s dancing fingers descended on trembling flesh, easing over the muscles before digging firmly in. 

Norrington cried and quivered until he could do nothing but lay still and remember to breathe as Jack’s magic hands soothed and manipulated him. 

Long after the hurting man fell asleep, Jack continued unhurriedly, working oil into the wiry muscles of taut arms, the meaty globes of his backside, the long muscles of thighs and calves, marveling at the pale skin all over.

Norrington barely huffed a complaint as Sparrow deftly turned him to his back, so the oil could find its way across chest and shoulders, all those aching muscles sore from too much brisk work. Sparrow swallowed thickly as he examined the prone body, a fine figure of a man, surprisingly well muscled, skin unbelievably pale—always hidden from the Caribbean sun beneath layers of Navy propriety. Jack looked upon the lax sex with birdlike curiosity and brushed his knuckles against the limp penis.

Finally, Sparrow shook off his bewitchment, drew a light sheet over the resting body, and tumbled himself into the waiting hammock with a pressing need between his legs.

= = = = =

In the early morning, Norrington woke; he carefully stretched muscles that weren’t as stiff as they should be, even with Jack’s administrations. He wondered how long the pirate had continued to touch him after he was out. He looked at Sparrow’s sleeping form and also wondered how worried he should be. He drew on the clothes that were still sprawled on the floor, buckled his gold sword belt round his waist, and retied his messy brown hair before snagging an apple for breakfast and making his way out on deck. 

“How are ye feeling?”

Norrington regarded Anamaria with obvious suspicion before he condescended to answer her. “Better than expected, Miss.”

“‘Anamaria.’ I ain’t no little missy.”

“Of course. Anamaria,” he said, unused to calling anyone by their given name, let alone a woman. He eyed her then, as though appraising, and then offered his hand. “James,” he said.

“So you do have a name.” She took the hand in a firm grip. “You’ll still be the Navy Man until ye prove yerself.”

“Prove myself of what? I’m a prisoner here.”

“Not de way I see it,” she said with a nod to the sails that billowed above them. “You work, yes? By yer own choice. That’s not a prisoner’s prerogative.”

“No?” he asked. “Whose prerogative is it, then?”

“A sailor’s.”

Taken aback, Norrington bit off a chunk of mealy apple and squinted at the rising sun. “You’re right,” he agreed. 

The pair of them understood that – for the moment – there was a truce and they looked out to sea together, leaning on the gunwale.

= = = = =

When Sparrow stumbled out of his cabin sometime before midday, he looked around with his usual mystification before finding someone to address. “Commodore?” was all he could get out.

“’E’s wiv the pump crew t’day,” Davis – a dark-skinned crewman with dreadlocks to rival Jack’s – told him, and Sparrow frowned before lurching toward the hold.

As he descended the stairs, each level brought him closer to the sound of song that issued up from the bilge pumps.

Sparrow finally reached the lowest level and stuck his head inside the dark place lit only by a single lantern where Norrington was leading the small crew in a makeshift pumping chantey. 

Norrington sang: 

“My father taught me well To shun the gates of hell,  
Bar the gates to my rebel, as I sailed…  
He shoved a bible in my hand,  
But I left it in the sand  
As I pulled away from land as I sailed…”

The three other men joined in on the chorus:

“My name is Captain Kidd,  
As I sailed, as I sailed!  
Oh, my name is Captain Kidd, as I sailed…  
My name is Captain Kidd  
And God’s laws I did forbid,  
And most wickedly I did as I sailed!”

Jack grinned to himself, knowing how happy the men would be to hear a new song. Anything to break the monotony.

“I murdered William Moore  
And left him in his gore  
Twenty leagues away from shore, as I sailed,  
And e’en crueler still,  
The gunner I did kill,  
Oh, his precious blood did spill, as I sailed…”

= = = = =

That day, they reached their destined port, a tiny lagoon barely large enough to hide the _Pearl_ , which seemed far too large for such a harbor, but the water was deep and the crew excellent. They dropped anchor and the long boats soon had the majority of the men upon the beach, where those skilled in cooperage assembled the barrels to fetch fresh water and edible vegetation, and some took to the green wilds in search of fruit and the few wild animals worth hunting. Gibbs claimed that goats had been brought ashore to the island years and years ago. He said they’d escaped and that they’d mated and now ran wild through the jungle. The men were ready to believe him and eager to run about like boys, their pistols waving.

Norrington, who’d devoted himself to helping the coopers by holding what they said to hold and keeping his fingers from under the hammers, shook his head at the folly and smiled to himself while another set of men gathered wood for a fire and sang a song of love and far away places. 

= = = = =

When the fire burned bright and the moon hung high and pregnant above them, and the rum soused the men and they lolled upon the sand, calls rang out for a song and the men prayed upon Norrington to sing, for they’d all heard one another’s tunes too many times before. The Navy in the Navy Man seemed to be forgotten in favor of new blood.

Norrington laughed and agreed, declaring, “I shall sing, but—! But I am not a pirate, I’d have you remember, and so no bawdy words you’ll hear from me, but a Clean Song!”

Cries of “Argh!” and “Nay!” went up, but Norrington could not be dissuaded and he gestured the catcallers to silence before he began:

“There was a young sailor  
Who looked through the _glass_ ,  
And spied a fair mermaid  
With scales on her…

“Island! Where seagulls   
Fly over their _nests_ ,  
She combed the long hair  
That hung over her…

“Shoulders! And caused her  
To tickle and _itch_.  
The sailor cried out,  
‘There’s a beautiful…

“‘Mermaid! A-sitting out  
There on the _rocks_.’  
The crew came around  
A-grabbing their…

“Glasses! And crowded  
Four deep to the _rail_ ,  
All eager to share  
In this fine piece of…

“News! Which the captain soon  
Heard from the _watch_.  
He tied down the wheel  
And he reached for his…

“Crackers! And cheese which  
He kept near the _door_ ,  
In case he might someday  
Encounter a…

“Mermaid! He knew he must   
Use all his _wits_ ,  
Crying, ‘Throw out a line;  
We’ll lasso her…

“‘Flippers!”

And so it went, the men laughing uproariously the whole time while Jack looked on fondly. When Anamaria sat beside the Captain on the sand, he slipped an arm about her and held her close while they listened.

“He’s a strange man,” she said.

“Oh, aye,” Jack readily agreed. “I don’t know what to make of ‘im.”

“I know what you _want_ to make of him,” Anamaria suggested.

Jack swiveled abruptly to lean in and frown at her. His hand crept toward her breast as he began, “I can’t think what you m—”

Anamaria viciously knocked his hand away and chided, “You know well enough what I mean, Jack.” She shook her head then and her temper drained as she listened to the man singing in a lusty baritone. “I think it’s bad news. Bad enough when you know what you want,” she warned. “Worse when you don’t even know that.”

“Jus’ what are you accusin’ me of, eh?” he asked, rubbing the hand that had been so brutally slapped away.

She nodded at the prisoner, swaying with the song and with rum as a man shoved Norrington into the sand for a laugh. “Same as him. You neither of you know what you want, and that spells trouble for the rest of us.”

Jack smoothed down his eyebrows and frowned, tossing his head so that his beads whipped Anamaria in the face. “Bugger.”

= = = = =

The men voted to stay ashore for another two days, both for a reprieve and for a chance to stock up on goods. Not to mention that it was well known that setting sail on a Friday was the worst of luck, so Saturday it would be.

To Norrington’s surprise, two goats were indeed found deep in the land; one was sent to the _Pearl_ ’s hold and the other set aside for that night’s dinner.

Because it was bad luck to repair flags on deck, Norrington assigned himself to fetch the _Pearl_ ’s unique colors and bring them ashore for mending. He also helped remove the sail most in need of repair, and he sat with Cotton for hours in the shade on the shoreline, stitching up the fading black canvas. They worked in silent companionship, and Norrington appreciated the camaraderie that had no need for conversation, despite the occasional interjection from Cotton’s parrot.

Meanwhile, Jack walked the beach with Gibbs and Anamaria, taking stock of what they had and what they needed, and what could be done to keep the crew happy.

“Seems the new addition isn’t as bothersome as first surmised,” Jack posed.

Anamaria nodded and Gibbs said, “Aye. ‘E’s doin’ well enough. Still some doubts, but the lad’s provin’ everyday that he ain’t a bother an’ willin’ to do a share.” Gibbs shrugged and drank from the flask always kept to hand. “An’ what’ll ye be doin’ at week’s end?”

The trio stopped, their bare feet in the lapping waves, and looked up the curving shore to Cotton and Norrington tucked away under the canopy of palm leaves, enshrouded by the huge black sail. Jack grabbed Gibbs’s flask and took a drink himself. “’E’s kept ‘is word as I ‘ave mine. Week’s end, we’ll drop ‘im where ‘e likes, eh?” He shoved the flask at Gibbs and stalked back the way they’d come.

= = = = =

That night, Norrington rowed Jack back to the _Pearl_ where they both chose to sleep, rocked by the soothing water. 

Norrington rolled into the hammock after carefully setting aside the silk shirt that he’d only just washed. Jack spent a good deal of time pacing the room, fiddling with the dressings and thumbing through the maps.

From his perch in the black netting, Norrington watched, peering between strings of brown hair no longer constrained by its lost velvet trapping. “Go to sleep, Sparrow.”

“I’m not tired, James.”

His brow darkened and Norrington groaned, “Anamaria’s been talking.”

“Gibbs, actually,” Sparrow said. “Or did you forget you once served with him?”

“No, I hadn’t forgotten. Are you to call me James, then?”

“If you allow it,” Jack teased, as though Norrington could plausibly make Jack Sparrow do anything he didn’t want. “And you could call me Jack, y’know.”

Norrington grumbled and rolled away, putting his back to the man. 

Jack smirked to himself and plucked a blanket off his own bed to cover his guest.

Surprised, Norrington lifted his head. “Thanks, Sparrow.”

“Welcome, James.”

= = = = =

The next day saw the _Black Pearl_ loaded with barrels of fresh food and water while men strung up the repaired sail.

For all the hours there was light in the sky, the men worked like dogs so that by the time stars twinkled into view in the east, half the men were already abed and not a one was heard to complain, for the boat was finally ship shape and almost Bristol fashion, ready to set sail come morning.

“Where to next?” Norrington asked. He stood at Jack’s shoulder where the Captain stood at the helm and snapped shut his compass to lean idly on the wheel and examine the crevice of rock by which they would exit the lagoon the next day.

Jack shrugged. Truth was, they were due for a spot of piracy, but he was loath to engage in such sport with Norrington running about free on his ship. “We need rum,” he said instead.

James stared him down. “Uh-huh,” he wondered. “Well, I anticipate a long day tomorrow. I’m turning in.” He clapped Jack on the back without thinking and descended the steps from the quarterdeck. Before he slipped into the Captain’s cabin, Norrington leaned on the portside rail to tip his head back and watch the blooming stars. He frowned at the distant flickers and eventually ducked his head and dragged his feet on his way to bed.

Jack chose to watch the changing colors of the sky, and to commune with the silent _Pearl_ in her restlessness. She surged beneath his feet, reaching for open seas.

“Tomorrow,” he promised, palming a handle on the wheel.

= = = = =

When Sparrow finally rolled in to his cabin, he eyed the place in confusion as though uncertain where he was. “Oh.” He lit a single lantern, chary of disturbing his guest, who swayed slowly back and forth, otherwise motionless in the net hammock. “You awake, then?” Jack asked quietly, sneaking over, keeping the lantern low. He poked Norrington’s bicep and said, “James.”

With no response forthcoming, Jack watched the man’s face, calm in sleep. He breathed steady and slow through parted lips and even his eyes were at rest beneath thin, waxy lids. Jack lifted a grimy hand to rub his thumb along the man’s cheek and lips and beard.

James twitched in his sleep and Jack jumped backwards, falling to the deck with a thump and mild crash. “Ow.”

“Sparrow?”

“Go to sleep.”

“Aye, aye…”

= = = = =

Everyone waited with nerves on edge the next morning when the oars were run out and the narrow opening in the cliff was slowly breached. No one breathed easy until the sails were set to catch the wind as she tacked into it and the _Pearl_ was running swift through the water.

Even with the high winds, it proved to be a hot day, and the men went shirtless on deck, heaving and working to Jack’s orders and Anamaria’s shouts and Gibbs’s gruff song.

Norrington again climbed to the rigging, where he ambled about the masts until his muscles burned, when he descended to the deck again, stretching his body in careful exercise and drinking from the replenished water barrel.

Just as he was looking about for something more to do, he saw Captain Sparrow at the wheel beckoning him. 

James had no trouble keeping his legs under him, even as the _Black Pearl_ rose and fell with the high swells of the open ocean. “Ship is damn fast,” he praised as soon as Jack was within earshot.

“O’course!” Sparrow beamed at him. “She’s me _Pearl_.”

“So?”

“So what?”

“You wanted to speak to me,” Norrington said.

“Oh, aye,” Sparrow recollected. “Been meanin’ t’ask ye.” And he plucked at Norrington’s billowing white shirt. “Take ‘at off.”

“Take it off?” A smirk curved the lines of his expressive face and he pulled the shirt over his head. “Yes, now what? Captain?”

“Wanted to ask about yer tan.”

Norrington looked down at his pale chest. “I don’t have one.”

“Precisely.”

Nonplussed, James asked, “Well?”

“Well why don’t you burn? Someone fair as you: usually a few hours under that,” and he waved his fluttering fingers at the sun, “An’ a lubber’s red as your British coats.”

“Oh, I see,” Norrington said with a laugh. His laughter was strange, hoarse and choking, as a tune that might be pulled from an old, neglected instrument. He shook his head. “I don’t burn.”

“Fair as you are?” Jack asked, peering from his kohl-rimmed eyes. “I don’t believe it.”

“Is seeing not believing, then?”

Jack poked him in the chest, once, hard, and said, “No.”

= = = = =

In the evening, the wind stilled nearly into doldrums and the sails were set to full canvas to catch what was left of it. Norrington stood together with Gibbs at the fore, watching the sea they drifted toward. A flask being too small to split between two thirsty men, they shared one of the last remaining bottles of rum from the store.

“You didn’ shave,” Gibbs observed.

“On the island?” Norrington asked. “No.”

“Well I’ll not have ye doin’ it on this ship.”

James scratched idly at his scalp, which itched from the salt and dirt and sweat of the day. “No,” he agreed. “I don’t cut my hair or my nails on board. I don’t shave. I put my right foot forward and I don’t look shoreward once we’re out. I don’t bring flowers aboard, and I’ll refuse to do much of anything of Fridays, along with the rest of the crew. I don’t shoot seagulls, Gibbs, and I won’t whistle the wind when we already have one. Though I notice you don’t mind Anamaria.”

“She ain’t a woman, that one,” Gibbs allowed. “Bloody hellcat.” But he seemed pacified.

“Besides,” Norrington finally added, “I like the beard. I think I’ll keep it.”

= = = = =

That night, Norrington couldn’t sleep. The hammock rocked him gently as the sea calmed beneath the hull, but he felt an itching in his fingers. He swung out of his hammock and regarded Sparrow, who had fallen to sleep mumbling indiscernible ravings to the dark, as Norrington had learned he sometimes did.

There was just enough light from the night sky shining in the mottled windows for Norrington to avoid the furniture, and he carefully padded his way to the bunk, where he retrieved the covers that had been kicked to the floor. As usual, Sparrow had slept clothed, and he was all twisted up in the loose shirt and fading striped sash. Norrington threw the blankets over him and silently exited the cabin.

The deck was quiet, and Norrington was just in time for the second dogwatch of the night. He immediately offered to substitute for someone, truthfully citing his inability to sleep, and the pirates flipped coins to choose who would go back to the hold.

Norrington ended up in the crow’s nest for the night, unconcerned by the severe back and forth rocking so high above the deck. He found he could sit with his back to the mast and his legs dangling over the little bucket seat and still be quite comfortable. 

The stars moved their slow and resolute path across the dark net of the blue midnight sky, glittering and pulsing without end. Norrington wearied of watching them, but did not look away.

= = = = =

On Sunday morning, the sun bloomed red across the sky, casting a bloody glow upon distant clouds that troubled the horizon.

Norrington watched that bright light slowly overcome the dimming stars. He shifted finally to his feet, stretching and rubbing muscles that ached from sitting so long and clinging to the lofty perch. Men were just beginning to move about on the deck, and the wind was picking up once more. But before the men could compromise for the new strength of the wind, a shock of something in the corner of his eye caught Norrington’s attention.

“Sail!” he shouted with all the force of his voice, which shuddered down, shocking the men below. “Sails at the fore, coming up fast, from the eye of the wind!” Norrington shouted, aggrieved that he hadn’t noticed them sooner. 

Satisfied that his message was received, he quickly but carefully descended the hundred feet to the deck, which seemed to seethe with chaos as the last men were roused and the sails were reefed just enough to keep the wind as a tool and not a tormenter.

One moment, Jack was nowhere to be seen, and then there he was at the bow of the ship, telescope aimed outward. “ _Royal Fortune_!” he screamed to the men as he descended to the main deck. “Set sails! We need to outrun ‘er! Stop tacking! Turn about and run with the wind now, you scallywags! Run out the starboard cannons! Unless you want to fall to Black Bart, then move your miserable arses!

“You,” Sparrow grabbed Anamaria, “get below. Load half with roundshot and half grape and use your best judgment. Hopefully, we won’t need either. Gibbs! We need to outrun that intercept point!” and he was off with more orders, and Norrington was left to his own devices. He shot like a bullet to the cabin to fetch his sword and pistol, cursing himself for being so careless as he slung the sturdy belt round his narrow hips, checking that the flintlock pistol was still loaded and there was priming in the pan. Once returned to the deck, he joined the men in the laborious task of heaving the sails to their places. His fingers itched as he gripped the thick ropes and he realized this was why he hadn’t slept that night.

Frenzy overtook the men, for they knew the punishments Black Bart Roberts inflicted on his prisoners. He was near bad as Blackbeard, and none wished his wrath.

“Still comin’ right for us!” a man called out as the _Pearl_ made her lumbering turn.

Sparrow rushed by Norrington in a haphazard sprint. “’E wants my ship! Everyone wants my bloody ship!” He took the wheel from Cotton and shouted orders in his loud, sergeant’s voice. When a brief respite fell and there was no more yelling to be done, Jack murmured, “C’mon girl, work with ol’ Jack now…”

The sails were run full out and set to half their capable fullness and the _Pearl_ was nearly at the perfect angle to grasp full wind and soar over the water, but it was clear to those with eyes that they would still be intercepted by the _Fortune_ , which was obviously steered by a master, and if they tacked into the wind and tried a different direction, Roberts might still catch up.

“Brace yourselves, lads!” Sparrow called as the two ships grew inevitably closer. “Don’t fire till you see their damn eyes, get ready to cut the grapnel lines! Fetch the caltrops!”

At the thought of the four-spiked cast-iron projectiles, Norrington shuddered and immediately regretted the foolish decision to discard his shoes. Caltrops, which would land with three spikes forming a base and the fourth sticking straight up into the air, were hell for pirating sailors, who mostly went barefoot on deck. Hopefully, Sparrow would be the only one to use the French Corsair weapons in this battle. James Norrington could only wait. 

His green eyes grew wide at the sight of the approaching ship, a large brigantine mounted with twenty-eight guns. Granted, only half of them could fire on the _Pearl_ , but that was a good few too many. Norrington looked further up to the black flag that depicted two white figures, a man and a skeleton together holding up an hourglass. He gritted his teeth and felt the adrenaline coursing through him. James was ready to battle, and let no man stand in his way.

“Consorts!” Marty called down from the rigging. “At least two more ships coming up behind!”

“Bugger, bugger,” Sparrow muttered, wordlessly urging the _Pearl_ to go faster.

But all other threats were forgotten as the _Royal Fortune_ intercepted them, coming along broadside.

The ship came up faster than expected, and both crews were screaming, cursing the enemy, praying to gods they only half believed in until every man was deafened as almost thirty cannons fired simultaneously. Grapeshot from the _Fortune_ spat across the _Pearl_ ’s deck, ripping flesh and canvas alike. Norrington watched chain shot arc harmlessly above the waist of the ship. Designed to wrap around masts and break them or decimate sails, the two cannonballs linked with a length of chain missed its marks completely. But round shot hit low on both sides, puncturing hulls and Norrington saw one man knocked clean off his feet and over the portside gunwale. He couldn’t hear the telltale splash as the guns of both crews fired. Pistols, blunderbusses, and captured muskets cracked in the air. The wind carried away the white smoke, but it seemed slow like fog, and the first grappling hooks were slung from the _Royal Fortune_ , catching on everything from rigging and yardarms to gunwales and scuppers.

The ships were quickly dragged together and Norrington shot forward with his sharp sword, hacking at the lines that bound the ships and screaming like a madman. A bullet whipped by his head so close his hair flared back flat to his skull. He stabbed the first man who attempted to board, pushing the blade into resistant flesh, twisting it so it wouldn’t stick, and drawing it back bloodied. Then he caught sight of Black Bart himself. The pirate captain was bright in his crimson coat and tall and handsome, but his face twisted cruelly as he stalked the far side of the _Fortune_ , blaring his orders, urging the men on. 

Roberts saw one of his own men reloading a musket with only half powder, to spare the kick of the stock, and Black Bart shot him in the leg. It was a punishment to be sure, but not fatal, and he ordered the man to keep firing, full powder.

Aboard the _Pearl_ , the caltrops were fetched from the ballast and hauled above to Marty, who tossed them to the deck of the _Royal Fortune_ , where the loose bag split apart and the caltrops scattered across the deck. Men rushing to board the enemy screamed as the spikes dug into the unprotected flesh of their feet.

Sparrow had given up the helm to Cotton and stood at the top of the steps to the quarterdeck, shouting orders. The _Black Pearl_ finally aligned with the wind and Jack could tell they would escape, but not without damage. Black Bart’s men hadn’t fired in a rolling volley, but as one huge blast, whereas Jack’s crew – though outnumbered two to one – hid as well as they could from that first assault and then fired in organized volleys, the small bursts of gunfire separated only by seconds, and repelling the boarders with ease. The grapnels were worrisome, but Norrington had taken control there, looking for lines and ordering specific men to cut them. “Marty, get that line there, ten feet to starboard! Davis, cut that one on the bowsprit!”

As Jack watched the Navy man, Norrington happened to look back just in time to shout a warning, “Sparrow! Down!”

Jack hit the deck as fifteen-foot wooden pikes tipped with metal spearheads were thrust at him from the _Fortune_ and Jack finally drew his pistols. He fired both and two men went down, but he didn’t have the sense enough to back away, instead batting aside the long lances with his sword as he danced forward and back, his free hand flung out for balance. “Stay off my bloody ship!”

Norrington took the steps to the quarterdeck two at a time and slashed his saber down with such fury at one pike that the wood snapped and the point clunked down to the deck, still attached to three feet of wood. Norrington picked it up, chose a target, and hurled it like a spear, catching a man twenty feet away in the gut.

Sparrow was too surprised at this inspiring feat to do much of anything, and so didn’t see one final weapon aimed at his throat. Norrington shoved Sparrow away, leaving himself in the path of the pike that was thrust so viciously it pierced his heart and emerged from his back in an arcing spray of bright blood. 

As soon as the blood hit the deck, the _Pearl_ surged, rearing like a bucking horse. 

James collapsed as Sparrow shrieked and picked up Norrington’s pistol. He fired at the man responsible for the killing and caught him in the groin.

By the time his revenge was complete, Sparrow realized the ship had been freed of the lines and the wind caught what was left of the sails and the _Royal Fortune_ was a fading speck in the distance behind them, and the men were cursing and wounded, and Anamaria was back on deck, and Norrington was dying at his feet.


	3. Dead Man

“He’s dead! He’s dead!” Sparrow shrieked, and he grabbed the long pike in two grubby hands, trying to yank it out. He pulled with all his might, pressing Norrington’s chest down with his foot until the beastly thing came free, sending another wave of bright blood to the thirsty deck.

“He’s a goner, Cap’n,” Gibbs warned.

Sparrow surprised even himself at the force of his sparking, vehement, “No!” as he dragged Norrington up and half carried, half dragged him down the steps and into his cabin. He laid the man on the black floor and the red blood pooled and Jack pressed his fear-white hands to the gash, putting all his weight behind the force of it.

Norrington looked dead. Sparrow prayed he was only unconscious, even as reason told him this was not something a man recovered from.

Anamaria and Gibbs stormed the Captain’s cabin with rags and bottles of god-knows-what. They kneeled, Anamaria across from Jack and Gibbs at Norrington’s head.

“You have to let him go, Cap’n,” Gibbs advised.

“No,” Jack said again, unwilling to yield. “D’you ‘ear that, James,” he yelled, as though to be heard across a vast emptiness, “The week’s not up yet, you damned Navy Man!”

“Jack,” Anamaria began.

Norrington surged under Jack’s hands, he breathed deep and the air whistled through his lungs as green eyes flashed open and he coughed repeatedly, blood spraying from his mouth.

“There you are,” Jack said with a shaky grin. “Anamaria,” he directed, and she held the bottle over Norrington’s chest. “On three,” Jack ordered. “One, two, three!” He pulled back his hands and Anamaria poured the liquor over the wound that didn’t seem to flow so thickly now.

“No man can survive this,” she marveled as Gibbs pulled away the remains of the silk shirt and then held down Norrington’s jerking shoulders as another douse of alcohol cleaned the hole in his chest. Gibbs slapped a palmful of something brown and murkish to the wound.

Jack took up a bundle of rag and pressed it with all his strength to the poultice as they quickly rolled James to his side and poured more of the lightening-sting stuff over his back, washing away the red blood. More moss and rags were pressed tight and strips of tough muslin were wrapped round and round to bind the compresses close until the entirety of Norrington’s torso was swathed in white.

The man moaned insensibly and his three doctors worked together to lift his head and get rum into him. “D’we ‘ave any damn laudanum?” Sparrow asked.

“Couldn’t hurt,” Anamaria said and she snapped at the door where Marty stood waiting. “Find some, quick Marty.”

The little man nodded and ran off while Jack crooned low and desperate to the body in his arms. “C’mon now James; I told you we weren’t done chasin’ yet an’ we ain’t. Listen to me you right bastard, stay with ol’ Jack now, stay with me.”

A tiny bottle of laudanum – all they had – was fetched from the hold and half of it went down James’s throat.

Jack insisted on lifting the man into the bunk, and then he chased everyone else out of the cabin and sent for buckets of water to mop up the mess of blood himself. But by the time he kneeled on the floor with wet rag in hand, the last of the red viscous blood was seeping into the seams and grain of the black wood like sand draining through an hourglass. Sparrow stared in disbelief and then looked to the sleeping man, where red blossomed on the white bandages like a sunrise.

Beyond the window, the rain began to fall.

= = = = =

Norrington was fevered through the rest of the day and into the night, and Jack ignored the entreaties that assaulted his latched doors in waves. Different voices called for him, asking or begging, sometimes demanding. Jack sat upon the bunk with his back against the wall so that he could prop James in front of him and hold the man to his chest. He hoped to keep the pressure off the heart – although he could have sworn there shouldn’t be anything left to it – and to warm the man that shivered and raved at turns in Jack’s unrelenting hold.

Sometimes James called out for a mother who Jack imagined as a beautiful young woman with blond curls and green eyes that indulged her little boy’s every whim. At others, he cursed in a Gaelic brogue that Jack could almost understand, and he imagined James learning the curses from the Scottish or Irish men who considered themselves purser rigged and parish damned, who had taken the King’s shilling for want of anything better.

Sometimes he shivered and begged for fire, but all Jack could do was draw his legs up to either side and fold the blankets tight around both of them, trying to make a warm cocoon to encase the man. When he begged for water, Jack held the bottle of watered down rum to pale lips and blotted away what dripped into the scruffy beard.

Jack was awake all night, unconscious of the powder that still scorched his face in black lines, of the blood that stained his shirt. The kohl around his eyes had been cried away to dry in funny gray stripes on his cheeks. Sometimes he rocked in tiny motions from side to side until Norrington whined, and then he hummed a low song of his own design that rumbled deep in his throat.  
 He eventually found time to marvel at the wonder that he held in his arms. A man who should be dead.

When the sun finally rose, visible only for the lightening of the gray outside the window where the rain fell, Norrington lay still. He did not writhe or shiver; he did not speak or cry. His body slowly warmed as his forehead cooled and the reddened bandages had dried to a brackish brown. It looked as though the bleeding had stopped.

Jack considered that a miracle had graced them as he carefully slipped out from under his charge to brave the deck.

He shut the door quickly behind him. The rain lashed his face, but it wasn’t a vicious storm. The _Black Pearl_ stayed her steady course, following Jack’s orders issued through the door the previous night to make for Tortuga. But befuddled as he was, he could make no guess as to how close they might be. Anamaria was at the wheel and he clumped up to converse with her as he pulled out his compass.

Her dark, caring eyes held a question, but the girl held her tongue, and she calmly nodded and answered Jack’s hushed queries.

Then the Captain spent three hours investigating every inch of his ship. The men had done well, repairing what they could. Five bodies awaited a proper burial at sea, and Gibbs saw to the preparations.  
 After Jack caressed or stalked every board of the ship, the men gathered on the deck to give the canvas wrapped bodies to the ocean with Jack’s calm and quick words of almost-respect.

The rain still fell and it was near noon when Jack Sparrow – soaked to the skin and chilled to the bone – returned to his cabin.

Norrington was propped up in the bed, reading a book that he must have dug out from one of Jack’s many trunks.

Sparrow halted, sending himself off balance so that he stumbled forward and nearly fell. “What the bloody hell?!”

Norrington looked up. He seemed tired, but not ill, certainly not a man who’d taken a pike to the chest the day before. “You’re wet.”

“You’re alive!”

James grimaced and set the book aside on the windowsill. He looked out the small, lead-set windowpanes to watch the gray sheets of rain for a moment. “…Yes.” He looked back to his host. “You really are soaked, Sparrow.”

“I am?”

Norrington stood – slowly – and short, careful steps brought him eye to eye with Sparrow. All of his movements were slow, each one a test. He reached up to remove Sparrow’s hat, and his eyes tightened in a small smile when the rain poured off it in a sudden waterfall to the floor. James grinned wider and he tilted his head to the side as he took handfuls of black dreadlocks to squeeze the water from them like a sponge. “You’re a regular drowned rat.” His voice was a low grumble. 

Jack could only stare as those strong, pale hands reached for him, sliding away the soaked coat, gently lifting off the thick sword belt, unwinding the waist sash and belts, opening the doublet button by button until it too could fall away. “What a’you doin’ mate?”

Taken aback, James stilled a moment before explaining, “Sparrow, you’re freezing.”

Only then did Jack realize that this was utterly true and as though a dam had burst, shivers ran through him in shocking waves, and he did his best to help with the disrobing, kicking off ragged boots and shimmying out of black breeches while James worked at the dirty white shirt. 

Jack continued to shiver until both men were wrapped together in the narrow bunk under the threadbare, graying covers. Norrington’s hands, hot in comparison to the rain-cooled flesh, rubbed slow, soothing circles on Jack’s chest, sprinkled with black hair going gray and swirling ink. And scars aplenty.

It was only as Jack finally warmed and slipped under Morpheus’s spell that he realized Norrington hadn’t batted an eye at the sight of those disfigurements. 

= = = = =

When Jack woke, the room was dark, and he scrabbled at the edges of his consciousness to remember where he was, who was with him, and what had happened. He reckoned it to be somewhere in the midst of Monday night, and by the sound and feel of things, the rain still fell, heavy and solemn, out on the black ocean. He slithered out of bed and donned wet clothes to brave the weather and discover the state of things on deck.

All was well, if quiet, and he retreated back to the darkened cabin which – when he came in – was no longer dark.  
 Norrington had lit a pair of lanterns and was scrounging about for something edible. “I feel like I haven’t eaten in days,” he said.

“You haven’t.”

“Ah.” He swallowed a mouthful of hastily chewed meat, heavily salted and unidentifiable. He drank from what was probably the last bottle of rum on the ship, aside from whatever Gibbs had stowed away, and looked at Jack. “You’re wet again.” Then he sat in one of the chairs – sturdy oak that was unlikely to shift in tempestuous seas – to unwrap the bandage in lengths of brown-stained white. It fell to the floor like a long orange peel until Norrington was bare-chested. He poked at the hole on his chest, neatly knitted closed, raw and pink but not bleeding or infected.

“What are you?” 

“I told you,” Norrington answered, meeting fearful dark eyes, “I’m a dead man.” He stood and advanced. “I’m just a traveler in the dark.”

Jack backed up until he hit the doors. “Look ‘ere, there’s no need to be killin’ me…”

James smiled. “Sparrow. I’m not going to kill you.” He stood still then and the small grin faded. “You see now what I meant? James Norrington went down with the _Dauntless_ and with his men. I don’t know who I’ll be next, but I shouldn’t be here, with you. It’s not supposed to work this way. Now, I’ve died again and that has to be the truth.”

“No.” 

“No?”

“No,” Jack quickly returned, gathering himself once more and stepping forward, feet squelching in his boots. “Ya see, you’re still mine, and I know you’re alive. An’ if yer not a Commodore no more, well then, you can be a pirate, savvy?”

Norrington rubbed at his face as though to swipe away a heavy blanket of fatigue. “No, Mr. Sparrow, I do not savvy. I am not a pirate. I…” He had to be careful, so careful with his words. “I’ve tried to do what’s right for a long time.”

“And I don’t?” Jack asked. “I’m not a vicious man—”

“No. But you are a very dangerous one.”

“Thank you—”

“And a pirate. I don’t swindle and cheat.”

“It’s not hard to learn.”

“I don’t want to learn, Sparrow. Tell your crew I’m dead. They won’t have any trouble believing it. Sew me into my own canvas bundle and say what words you will and be rid of me.”

“NO!” And with that, the fire was back, the same spark that refused to give up a ship with black sails or let a dying man go. “Not now I have you, James Norrington. Too many years we’ve chased one another down. Now I 'ave you, an' I 'ave you for keeps.”

“Have me?” Norrington interrupted. “And what do you intend to do with me?”

Jack braved another step forward, only an arm’s length from the mystery. “Do with you? Whatever we want; we’ll do for one another, I think.”

“Are you indeed a lover of men, then? You’ve intimated it enough.”

Jack tossed his head to one side as his hands flew up and he answered the question. “I take as I find. Not too picky ‘bout what’s ‘tween the legs, long as I kin get to it.”

James couldn’t hold back the soft smile at that. “You always manage to astonish me.”

“Even all these years later? Ta, mate.”

Norrington stood silent and still then, moving with the ship, compensating for the sea swells without thought as he eyed Sparrow’s bedraggled form. “I work hard not to love.” He said it so softly it might only have been meant for angels’ ears.

“Oh? Dear Elizabeth—”

“Is a fine woman.”

“Aye, she is at that. You once asked her to marry you, if memory serves.”

“I imagine your memory rarely proves false, Sparrow. Yes, I wanted to marry her. But I… It was the proper thing to do.”

“Ah-huh,” Jack mused. His thoughts churned almost audibly in his head before words set him in swaying motion again. “Propriety means such a great deal to you, then, long as you’ve been workin’ for rightness?”

“Yes.”

“Time for a change, then, don’t you think? Worry less about a world that’s apt to grow the way it’s going to grow without much help or hindrance from one man, an’ do what’s right for James for once, instead of what’s right for that world.”

“You always make an unnerving deal of sense, even when you’re being circuitous.”

“Circuitous? Wouldn’t you be?”

“If I were a pirate?”

“If you were me.”

“If _I_ were you,” James began and then barked a laugh. “No, I won’t start this with you, Sp—”

“Too late,” Jack said and lunged forward, hugging Norrington tight and staring him down. Gentle as a sparrow, he tilted his head and closed his eyes, brushing rain-wet lips over Norrington’s.

James’s heart – for it was indeed whole – beat faster behind the ragged wound and he slipped his hands round the wet pirate, pressing the damp fabric to the heating skin beneath. He, too, closed his eyes to the night and then opened his mouth. 

A written invitation could not have been more explicit.

Teeth clicked and noses bumped until the angle was right, then beard scratched beard and blood began to boil as only rough and truly wild men know it can. 

Sparrow left off the tempting mouth to strip away the wet clothes again. They landed here and there about the cabin, on the black deck and brown chairs. He had to combat the assault on his newly bared flesh though, which slowed him down considerably since every stripped inch of skin was pawed, licked, or kissed, proving a significant distraction. And all the time, Jack was talking. “Y’know, yer slowin’ me down a good deal, mate. Ach, oh, I ‘aven’t done this in a while… That tickles; are you part-cat, maybe? Your tongue—oh! your tongue… You can call me Jack now, y’know… buggery buggery…”

“Soon,” Norrington agreed.

“Ah fuck,” Jack moaned, finally freeing his ankles of the clinging trousers.

“That too.”

“You’re a right tease.”

“’M not,” Norrington said, those nasal tones resurfacing. And somewhere amid all his tormenting, he’d freed himself of his white Navy breeches and he pulled their exposed bodies flush together. 

They weren’t as successful in their navigation across the room as they should have liked, but they made it to the bunk eventually, where Norrington complained about its size and Jack agreed just to shut him up. James readily lay back on the narrow bed and invited Jack to join him. The pirate drew a rain-washed finger in a gentle path around the angry gash. When he whispered, Jack’s usually absent h’s manifested in puffing, heathen glory. “Does it hurt?”

“Burns a bit.”

Jack replaced his finger with his lips, kissing a circle around the wound. “Don’ wanna hurt you.”

Norrington laughed. “Sparrow, I… can’t even think straight when you’re on top of me. You’ll hurt me far less than most things in my life.”

“All right, no more of that talk,” Jack insisted, kissing lips that flushed a ready pink under his nibbling ministrations while clever hands teased pale expanses of warming skin.

“Ugh, Sparrow…”

“Call me Jack. What is it?” Jack murmured against a readily proffered neck.

“Your hair’s wet; it’s like snakes sliming all over me.”

Jack couldn’t help but laugh. Then he groaned and stood up. He pulled James from the bed and lay down in his place, pulling Norrington over top of him. “Better?”

“Significantly,” Norrington agreed, setting at once to feast upon all that marred and bronzed flesh. He scraped his fingernail over the scars, eliciting a shocked gasp. He scratched his beard over a shoulder, inspiring a heaving sigh. He licked wet stripes across peaked nipples, drawing forth panting squeals that were so charming he had to do it again. Norrington slid back up for another kiss and told the gold-flashing grin, “One thing you can look forward to…”

“What’s ‘at?”

Norrington flashed a wicked smile and confessed, “I’m always tight as a virgin.”

Jack moaned as though pained and arched helplessly up, finally rubbing their arousals together between taut bellies. They were content to hump together like eager adolescents for long, delicious moments that were broken only by sighs and kisses.

Jack scrabbled around hopelessly for a lantern, but none were near enough. Sensing his trouble, Norrington leaned up to snag the nearest unlit lamp, unhooking it from the low ceiling. He straddled Sparrow’s thighs, only a shade lighter than the rest of his sun-darkened skin, and took his time removing the glass jar from the base of the lantern and extracting what was left of the greasy wick. He paused then, just as he was about to pour a handful of the coarse oil. “Or shall you do the honors?”

“Gimme.” Jack grabbed the jar and doused two fingers with the stuff.

James obliged him by scooting forward until his knees rested almost under Jack’s shoulders so the darting hands could assault his backside, one hand kneading the muscle while the oiled fingers sought his center. “Yes, Sparrow,” he whimpered, pushing readily down onto the first digit that breached him as he threw his head back and closed his eyes to the storm-dark night.

Another finger joined the first, sneaking up into the writhing body. Jack watched in awe as this man completely gave himself over, keening and wordlessly begging, latching a hand onto the windowsill for support as he rode the hand beneath him. “Oh, one more, add another…”

Jack obeyed instantly and his free hand shifted to grasp a powerful thigh.

Norrington winced and then sighed, “God, the thought of this has kept me awake nights…”

“’S’at so?”

“Oh yes.” His voice thundered even deeper than usual, rough with lust. “When I couldn’t stand ignoring it anymore, I’d imagine you creeping into my room and taking me over my desk in the study. I dreamt of chasing you down and holding you in the brig of a great ship, of sending the guards away and fucking you against the bulkhead with those delicate wrists shackled to the wall.” He stole away the jar of oil and coated a hand with it, reaching behind to stroke Jack’s curving cock.

“Jesus! you’ll be the end of me.”

“I think it’s the other way round,” Norrington muttered as he lifted off the stretching fingers and settled his arse against the blunt head that reached up toward him. “N-now,” he stuttered as he slowly sank down. 

Jack’s oil-slick hands slipped over Norrington’s hips and he tried not to thrust, not to go fast, but oh!-the-tight-white-heat-heaven!

James pulled a grimace as he paused, and then let the rocking of the ship draw him down inch by inch. His own arousal swelled out stiff and surprisingly pink and he drove his hips in tiny circles, easing into an almost forgotten rhythm. His expression transformed into a grin as he tightened his muscles and looked down to watch Jack writhe and listen to Jack grunt. The pirate squirmed like an eel under him and soon gained the leverage that forced him in and out, hitting Norrington’s sweet spot with every cadenced thrust.

Finally, finally, they met in tandem, each working the same as the other as their sweat glistened in the light from the lamps and they grinned wickedly, pushing ever higher for paradise. 

“I want to kiss you,” Jack begged, pulling in vain at slick skin.

James obliged, never breaking the tempo as he released his death grip on the windowsill and slid his hands up Jack’s heaving chest as he leaned down. He snuck creeping fingers up under Jack’s head to pull at the wet knot of the red head sash. “Do you ever take this off, Sparrow?” 

“Too much trouble,” Jack brokenly confessed, angling his thrusts higher.

Norrington unwound the worn linen and let it drop to the floor. He buried warm hands in Jack’s wet hair, and then drew damp hands to pert, coral-pink nipples.

Sparrow whimpered and dug his fingers deep into narrow hips, immobilizing his prey as he thrust upward. “Damn…”

James managed an awed, little laugh at the sight of pure pleasure that stretched Jack’s face. “No need to hold back, Sparrow. Come on, come in me.”

“Oh Jesus…”

“Come, come in me now…”

Jack cried out but didn’t give in until Norrington whispered his Christian name like a Christian prayer, wonder, awe, and worship in the huffed word, “Jack,” breathed hot and endless against his ear.

Jack crowed a howl to the heavens and surged up once more, spending himself in a riotous moment of ecstasy. He cursed and thrashed, riding out the spiraling waves before his strong hand closed over the heavy cock that bobbed on his stomach.

Norrington thrust without complaint into the ready sheath, still slick, until he spent, shooting white gobs over Jack’s belly. Having said it once was apparently not enough, and James crooned over and again, “Jack, Jack, Jack…”

Finally drained of everything that had kept them going – fear, hope, lust – they rolled together into a mass of limbs and hair, pulling over them what blankets could be found, and finally slipping into sleep as the rain ceased its relentless beat against the windows, and false dawn threatened the eastern sky.

So the week’s end passed away, and the two men bound to it never noticed.

= = = = =

“Jack? Jack!” Anamaria pounded on the doors. “It’s not good for you to be alone in there with… Just let us in, Jack.”

Norrington and Sparrow lay wound together.

“What are you going to tell them?”

Jack shrugged the question off and drew curious patterns on what flesh lay within reach. “Tell ‘em it’s a miracle,” he grumbled. “Sailors like to believe in miracles.”

James shook his head. “They’ll throw me overboard, maybe mutiny first. It’s not worth it.”

“You sayin’ you ain’t worth the attentions of Captain Jack Sparrow?” Jack asked, pulling back to regard him with a probing expression.

“Oh Jack…” Norrington climbed over him and pulled on his breeches. “Do you have a shirt I can borrow?”

Sparrow scrambled from the bed and they pulled on what clothes they could find.  
 Intermittently, Anamaria assaulted the doors until Jack was too annoyed to ignore it. “All righ’!” he shouted and banged back. “Out in a minute, you wretched ‘ellcat!” He turned to Norrington, “where’d you throw me scarf?”

= = = = =

Norrington was right of course; they hadn’t taken two steps on deck before fearful questions battered them on every side and Gibbs was warning Jack to put Norrington off the ship before he could draw the kraken down upon them.

“Look at it this way,” Jack found himself trying to convince them, “you’re in a spot o’ trouble, jes’ stand behind ol’ James, cause ‘e can’t die!”

“Is it true?” Anamaria quietly asked Norrington where they hung back near the cabin doors.  
 He had been surprised when she appointed herself his guardian after the crew realized the truth of an unharmed Norrington standing before them. He met her dark, sensuous eyes and nodded. She flinched but kept her place at his side, warning off the nearest men with a threatening look. 

“Why are you helping me?”

“We’ve all got secrets,” she told him. “But you saved our Jack. Once that bit sets in, they’ll calm down.

“…an’ I bet we kin on’y imagine the things he’s seen. Why, ‘oo knows where ‘e comes from? An’ not only that…”

Norrington shook his head and stepped forward. Jack’s diatribe drifted off and fearful gazes turned to the Navy Man. “I know I wasn’t welcome here from the beginning. And now you think you’ve brought a cursed man aboard. I didn’t bring the _Royal Fortune_ upon us, but I did sight it, and I saved Jack. And I’m loyal to him, and that means I’m loyal to you.”

When no one spoke out against this, Sparrow jumped at the chance and ordered, “Gibbs! The Articles.”

= = = = =

“I can’t believe I signed onto a pirate ship,” Norrington muttered as he hung upside down from the topgallant to run a quick stitch up the slashed sail. “Bloody pirates…”

“Now remember,” Jack coached those crew that could be rounded up to listen to yet another speech, “we don’t ‘ave a Commodore, we don’t know anything about a Commodore. We don’t call him Commodore, James, _or_ Norrington. He’s Jim—”

“Just Jim,” the crew responded in chorus, having heard it all day.

Anamaria laughed and stepped forward. “They savvy very well, Captain,” she assured Sparrow and put her arm around his shoulder to gently steer him in a circle. She muttered, “So stop pesterin’ and let ‘em work.” She pushed Jack toward his cabin and turned to address them. “All right, back to work with ye; we’ll be to Tortuga before you know it!”

= = = = =

When Norrington reported to the galley to collect dinner for Jack and himself, the cook grunted and asked, “Need to eat, do ye?”

James met the challenge head-on, glaring down the other man as he hardened his voice, “Yes, I do – in fact – need to eat.”

The round-bellied man with gray hair everywhere on him except his head grumbled and filled two bowls with the watery salmagundi, all that was left to them now aside from maggot-ridden tack. 

“Ta,” James grunted when the tray was shoved into his stomach. He navigated the below decks with ease, flitting up the steps with casual grace. The men gave him a wide berth and Norrington directed his gaze to his footing.

On deck the sun was setting behind layers of thinning gray clouds and the wind whipped hard at everything in its path. Norrington balanced the tray on one hand as he pulled open a door to the cabin and swiftly shut it behind him. “Food,” he announced.

Sparrow sniffed the air and grunted. “I ‘ate that gruel shit.”

“Well, it’s all that’s left unless you like weevils.”   
“I’ll pass.”

James set the tray on the barren dining table and pushed a bowl of the stuff and a spoon towards Jack, who had his feet propped up on the table as he looked over a list that Gibbs had scrawled out for him with questionable legibility. 

“What’s the damage?” James asked, settling himself in a chair and pulling his own bowl off the tray, which was no more than an old, warped plank.

“Lower sails and aft lateen sails shredded, topgallant sail on the foremast slashed, even the damn colors are blown to bits. Four roundshots taken to the starboard hull, means at least a fortnight in harbor. Need another five ‘undred feet o’ rope.” Jack sighed and slapped the paper down on the table. “Not to mention replacin’ all our supplies. Food. Rum. Water. Ammunition… You name it, we need it; only thing in our favor is we have gold enough to buy it.”

“Buy?”

“Tortuga isn’t the place to pillage unless no one knows ‘oo did it.”

“I see.”

Jack picked up the spoon and stirred the grayish slop about. “You gonna run off?”

Norrington looked up at the abrupt change in subject. “I signed your damn bits of paper, Captain. Much as I know it would best for everyone if I disappeared, I can’t help but think you won’t be so quick to let me go.”

“Damn right.”

Norrington ate his meal without complaint and said, “Besides, I’m not done on this ship yet.”

Jack perked up for the first time in hours. He sat forward and quizzed, “Wha’do you mean by that, now?”

Norrington finished the salmagundi and hesitated in his answer. “When you’ve been around as long as I have, you start to see… patterns.”

“Patterns?”

“Designs in the world and in the lives about you… that most people can’t see. When I asked Miss Swann to marry me, I wasn’t sure why I did it because I knew it would never come to be. I only knew that I should ask.” He shrugged. “The same way I know that no matter how I protest or what I do, you will eventually pull my secrets from me, as relentlessly as a shipworm bores into the keel.”

“Oh. Well, good.”

“You may think so,” Norrington told him. It was, unmistakably, a warning.

Jack regarded him with a slack-jawed stare and narrowed eyes. “Ah-huh…” Then he stood and busied himself lighting a few candles against the dark of the oncoming night with his tiny silver tinderbox that had fornicating figures etched on the inner lid.

“Sparrow, you should eat something.” 

Jack stuck out his tongue in disapproval of his dinner as he put the tinderbox away and then asked, “‘Sparrow’ am I again?”

Norrington softened and said, “Jack.”

The pirate sauntered over, fought with comical flailing to drag Norrington’s chair away from the table, and draped himself in the man’s lap. “Tha’s much better. Me shirt looks well on you,” he said, plucking at the dark fabric. “Now,” he kissed the tip of the nose before him, “D’you ‘ave some other name?”

Norrington turned his head away and looked to the shadow-swathed ceiling, affecting a very Commodorish air of effrontery. “Thanks to you, I believe I have been dubbed ‘Jim’ for the extent of my stay.”

Sparrow laughed and curled a hand around the back of Norrington’s neck, massaging with deep strokes. “You’ve not always been James.”

“No. But I’ve been a Norrington for a very long time.”

“’Ow long?”

“More questions,” James said, shaking his head. He dipped in for a slow kiss and brushed his knuckles along Jack’s rough jaw.

“No fair,” Jack complained of the kiss and opened his mouth for further exploration.

Norrington’s hand dragged down the tan, arching neck, over layers of doublet and shirt to pull idly at the laces that bound black breeches.

“An’ you say you’re not a pirate,” Jack breathed against his lips.

“I’m not,” James agreed, slipping a hand around Jack’s ready cock.

“Yet you’ve quite a talent fer plunderin’,” Jack gasped the compliment, surging upward, his feet floundering in the air as he grabbed the back of the chair to keep from falling to the floor.

James laughed and stroked him slowly, circling his other arm around Sparrow’s back to haul him close. Jack pulled at the buttons to Norrington’s borrowed shirt, exposing the pale chest and wiry brown hair. He curiously picked aside the dark cotton to bare the puckered scar over Norrington’s heart. “Does it still burn?”

“No. Tingles now and then.”

Jack rested his head idly against the arm that cradled him, and held the shirt down to examine the mark. He frowned then and batted Norrington’s fondling hand away. Jack squirmed until James released him and the pirate jumped to his feet, pulling his breeches to rights. “Up,” he ordered.

In good enough humor to comply, Norrington stood and Sparrow lifted the dark shirt over his scruffy head.

Jack frowned. With strong hands on wiry biceps, he dragged Norrington forward and turned him toward the candlelight where quick, grimy fingers sought the place over his heart where only the pink spider web lines betrayed the blade that would have killed a mortal man. Dark darting eyes examined this and the dancing fingers momentarily circled the scar before fluttering away, testing the skin over Norrington’s breast, finding that flesh could not lie in the light of the flicking candle, which served to highlight a map of silver that disappeared in the pale skin when under the light of anything harsher. There, a blade; there, a bullet. Jack knew how to read a body. There a whip. He focused intently on a light band that encircled Norrington’s upper arm. Questioning black eyes flashed up to bemused green. 

A confession: “Axe took my damn arm clean off.” A laugh. “You should have seen the look in this barbarian’s eyes when I picked it up and put it back on.”

Jack’s eyes grew wide and he firmly grabbed those arms and spun the man, ordering, “Turn ‘round.”

Quiescent, Norrington obeyed, enduring with what grace was left him the jittering fingers that explored his back.

“Jesus,” the pirate muttered, now knowing what to look for. “’Ow many times you been flogged?”

“More than I care to remember,” the admission was quiet, but free of shame or regret, “more years ago than I care to count.”

Hesitant, Jack grasped a thin wrist and lifted Norrington’s right arm, the same way a inquisitive boy unfolds the wing of a dead baby bird fallen from its nest: gentle, reverent, curious. Caffeine-nerved fingers resketched scars that had first been etched ages before and were only truly visible to those who knew what to look for. Finally, those whispering fingers withdrew, and Sparrow’s voice came hushed in the night, “Where’d you come from?”

Norrington laughed again and stepped away. He sat on the window seat and snagged the bottle of rum with only a few mouthfuls swirling at the bottom. He didn’t drink though, only looked out at the moon-kissed black ocean as the last evidence of the sun grayed out in the west. “Jack, it would be a great prize to stay by your side for a time.” He grinned and looked back to the Captain.

“With a pirate?”

Norrington examined the rum in its hazy glass bottle and finally laid it aside. “I have found that, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not the grand scheme of things that matters,” he confessed. “It’s moments. I tried to do good, to do right. To serve man. There’s only so much a person can do.”

“Ain’t that the truth.”

“And, as a smart young man once told me, being a pirate does not negate the possibility of also being a good man.”

“We can both of us be good men together,” Jack suggested.

A pained expression crossed James’s face, but then cleared, and he agreed, “For a while. Yes, Jack.”

“Won’t you come finish what you started then?” Sparrow asked, wagging his eyebrows. His dark eyes were bright, revealing a staggering intelligence in quick-fire sparks as he retreated into the moonlight that shone on his bed in pale shafts through the leaded windows.

Norrington’s hands drifted of their own accord to his graying breeches and he quickly cast aside the last remaining evidence of his Navy life as he stalked the darkness that lay between candles and moonlight. Jack disrobed with nonchalant grace broken apart by fragments of his occasional, fluttering inelegance. Norrington ducked down to pull aside beads and braids to kiss and tongue the exposed neck. 

Jack laughed in delight and his quick, cunning hands found all the places that made James gasp with pleasure. The no-longer-Navy man retaliated in turn, the barest brush of fingertips tickling bronzed blushing skin as his lips made quick work of peaked nipples and down a heaving stomach to engulf Jack’s curving cock.

The pirate captain half-reclined on the bed and threaded one hand through hanks of ratty brown hair tangled by wind and salt. He cursed and sighed his pleasure to the moonlit night until he came, bucking and frantic.

Norrington grinned and calmly stroked the heaving chest, letting Sparrow recover. When he did, Jack smiled lazily and dragged Norrington overtop of him until the man was squished between windows and pirate. In an attempt to be seductive, Jack fell off the narrow bunk, which set the pair of them to laughing. His disheveled head popped back into view and he kissed James quiet, those exploratory hands returning to torment already sensitized flesh. 

Sparrow returned the favor, swallowing down the reddened cock, throbbing and heavy with want. His saliva was slick and wet; his tongue flickered like a butterfly. His teeth threatened pain, only heightening the pleasure that quickly delivered itself.

Nearly silent, James came with only a mewl, spilling his seed and clasping empty air.

And though the bunk was narrow and the night warm, they lay there together, loath to part for the duration of their slumber.


	4. The Old Rhyme

The next day, they sighted Tortuga at noon and were berthed snug in the deep harbor by sunset. Jack turned the men loose for the night, not expecting to see half of them again for another three days, if they came back at all.

Gibbs himself took a few men to town and they were back in an hour with more than enough rum to last the night.

Norrington had spent the majority of the day amongst the rigging, communing with the wind and the _Pearl_. He found it prudent to avoid the crew, whether – previously – because they abhorred the Navy or – now – feared the unnatural.

But that night the deck was oddly quiet, as the sounds of the pirating taverns echoed grimly across the night-black water and poorly lit docks. Norrington leaned on the gunwale and looked out. Torches and lanterns flickered from the near shore. Laughter, song, and gunshots carried thinly on the air. James soaked it in, thinking he hadn’t known anything like it for a very long time.

Sparrow was quiet on his feet, but James felt his presence just the same. “Well, Jack, this is your chance to be clear of me. Your crew will thank you for it.”

“Aye? An’ I’d never forgive meself. You keep tryin’ to get me to get rid of you, but the more you try, the closer I’ll cling, savvy?”

“Like a limpet, I imagine.”

“Are you comparin’ me to a mollusk?”

“A fitting similarity,” James agreed. “A hard shell on the outside… but soft enough on the inside.”

“Soft enough to what?”

James smiled wickedly in the night; it was almost too dark to make out the expression. “Soft enough to eat. I do love oysters.”

“Back to bed with ye!” Jack ordered.

“Am I your cabin boy now, Sparrow?”

“Aye, you’d be pretty enough for it without the beard.”

“I like the beard.”

“It’ll grow back.”

“You’re going to make me shave tomorrow, aren’t you?”

From somewhere on deck, Gibbs’s voice bellowed, “Not aboard the ship!”

= = = = =

The next day, Jack and Norrington went ashore and they spent the daylight hours shopping. James, affectionately called Jim for the duration, let Sparrow dress him up like a life-sized doll: sturdy black boots, dark gray trousers, a white silk shirt, and dark green brocaded waistcoat. Jack even insisted upon a cocked, wide-brimmed hat set with a wren’s feather as a guard against shipwreck, all bought and paid for with honestly stolen silver. They were sensible clothes and Norrington was indistinguishable from any other rogue on the turtle-shaped island, though Jack made a habit of loudly whispering at him that he cut a dashing figure and though the clothes were grand enough, he couldn’t wait to take them off again.

That night, they rented the only half-decent room in the place. The bed might not collapse under them, and it might not be infested with lice. They were promised a hot bath in the morning along with a hot breakfast.

They sat naked in front of the fire. James shaved his chin clean, having grown tired of Jack’s incessant harping, while the Captain himself trimmed the curling black mustache. They passed a cracked hand-mirror back and forth between them as they performed these tasks and then Jack brushed the leftover water through Norrington’s hair, combing out the tangles. “Fine hair you’ve got,” he praised, his rough h’s again in evidence. “I hope you let it grow out.”

“Grows slow,” Norrington told him, pulling at a ragged thumbnail as he stared idly at the small fire in the grate.

When Jack finished his attentions to the dark brown hair, he traced the tiny scar on James’s back. “Did I ever thank you for savin’ me life?”

“Now why would you go and do that?” Norrington turned to face a suddenly solemn Jack. “It’s not as though you can repay the favor.”

“You truly can’t die, then?”

“Not as far as I can tell.” He grimaced and stood from the half-clean floor to reseat himself on the rickety bed. “Believe me, I should know. Prayed to die for a while. Didn’t know who I was praying to, but I wanted it to end sure enough.”

Naked on the floor, Sparrow regarded him with kohl-darkened eyes and a sad expression. “Not something you’d pray for now?” he asked. The spark was gone from his eyes; he needed this answer.

“Now?” James asked. “No. Now, I’m glad of my long life, if only for this one chance.”

“What chance?”

“The chance to look at you looking at me, knowing neither of us wish to be anywhere else in all the world.”

A slow grin stretched Jack’s uncommonly handsome features. “You’re a romantic at heart, aren’t ye, Jim?”

Norrington rolled expressive green eyes and an attractive smirk graced the clean-shaven face. “Get up here, you rascal.”

Overeager, Jack clambered awkwardly up onto the straw-stuffed mattress where they fell asleep, despite the ruckus that carried on about them far into the night. 

= = = = =

The morning was near silent and Norrington woke his companion with teasing kisses. They thrust languidly together for as long as they could stand it, until one spent himself after the other.

They called for soap and hot water, which was brought in buckets by two young maids followed by a copper basin only big enough to kneel in carried by a gruff man who said nothing.

The men washed themselves and each other, scrubbing away weariness and fear as much as dirt and sweat. Finally, they dressed themselves and checked their weapons with obsessive care before strapping them on. Breakfast was served upon a crooked, scarred table down in the tavern, and all was quiet but for the snores.

They were two of very few who walked the streets of Tortuga in the morning. They hired two boys with a wagon to follow them and Norrington loaded the wagon with supplies that Jack bought all over the town from people that he knew by name.

The four of them pushed and pulled the cart to the docks and up to the gangplank that was lowered at Jack’s hails. Gibbs was nowhere in sight, but Anamaria kicked awake a few crewmen and the first supplies were carried aboard.

= = = = = 

Over the next few days, the men who had scattered themselves throughout the island returned to the _Black Pearl_ , where they were put to work on repairs from the _Fortune_ ’s attack. They tarred lines and patched sails. The carpenters and coopers of Jack’s crew led the repairs on the hull while Anamaria, their most skilled gunner, took a group of men to the cannons to check each one for wear.

Others pumped the bilge, loaded the hold, balanced the ballast, and cleaned the ship from stem to stern. 

Norrington led the men who braved the rigging wearing only his new gray breeches. True to his word, James didn’t burn, and his skin slowly gained a copper tone to replace that too-pale white. The men obeyed him and worked with him – whether out of fear, respect, or just to earn their daily ration of rum – taking down sails for repair and replacing the broken yardarm.

Jack himself restored the colors that had been blown to bits, spending too much money for a fine black silk flag that he stitched the skull and crossbones into himself, adding the silhouette of a white sparrow in one corner and an hourglass in the other. He sat cross-legged on the dock while he performed this task, chased off the deck by Gibbs, who insisted on repeating multiple times that it was ‘bad luck to go fixin’ the colors on deck.’

As he worked needle and thread, Jack spared an occasional look heavenward, watching Norrington silhouetted against the bright blue sky amongst the masts, yardarms, and rigging, like a spider on a web.

At sunset, the men were released from their work. They took their pay and headed again to the taverns while Norrington shrugged on his shirt and sat beside Jack on the dock. He handed over a bottle of rum that Jack accepted with a smile of thanks and mockery of a salute. “Ta, mate.”

“I was thinking, Jack, there must be a good deal of treasure out there,” he gestured to the inlet they were docked in. “Petty fights among fellow pirates… tell me, have many ships sunk here in this harbor?”

“A fair few,” Sparrow agreed, wondering what the man was thinking.

“Could you,” James asked, “or one of the men maybe… pinpoint a spot? Know exactly where a boat went down?”

“Aye,” Jack agreed after a moment’s thought. “And sure, there’s plenty o’ coin in the depths. But we can’t get to— Wait a minute.” His calculating gaze passed over James. “You can’t die.”

“That’s right.”

“How long can you hold your breath?”

“It’s more a matter of… breathing differently. Let’s just say you send me out with a few men… better yet, simply anchor the _Pearl_ out there.” He waved his hand again. “You could do with some easy money, yes, while the repairs take place? I’ll take care of it. You leave it to me.”

= = = = =

James leaned back against the gunwale on the starboard bow, shaking his head as he watched the men on deck.

“Are ye sure, Jack?” Gibbs was asking, holding up an ancient astrolabe.

The Captain waltzed about the deck in circles, examining his open compass. “Aye. Here.”

“Drop anchor!” Anamaria demanded. “Reef the sails!”

Soon the ship was at a standstill in the water and the few men who had been onboard at sunrise descended from the rigging to return to their everyday tasks or to sleep, if they could get away with it under Anamaria’s watchful eye.

“I still say t’was a few good knots t’the north,” Davis muttered.

“And I say we’re too far east. The _Cassiopeia_ went down—”

“No,” Jack interrupted. “It’s here. You’re ready?” he shouted up at Norrington, who nodded and descended the ladder to the maindeck. “Aye. Give me a few men to do as I say, and I’ll be out of your hair. Ah, Mister Cotton, and Marty? Very good. Gather round.” He escorted the two men to the section of railing he’d claimed for himself. A dozen marked buckets attached to long ropes were tied to a pinrail that had been cleared for the purpose. James tried a smile. He liked working with Cotton and Marty, both of whom seemed content to overlook the fact that their prisoner turned guest turned fellow pirate was a mite bit supernatural. “There’s pile of stones there,” Norrington waved at the rocks he’d gathered in the night. “Load them in the buckets, just enough so that they sink, and lower them one by one into the water, nice and slow. Here, I’ll help.”

The three men worked the task together, letting the buckets smoothly down into the water per Norrington’s orders. Then, James threw off shirt and boots and declared that he would ride the last bucket down himself. He dove into the water and treaded there long enough to shout up, “Toss me that extra pail there! Now, take a look and you’ll see those lines are numbered. Thirty minutes from now, pull up the first. And then the second another half hour after that, and so on and so forth. I’ll see you in six hours!” And with that, he grabbed the last tethered bucket that dangled from Cotton’s hands and let his weight drag him under.

On deck, the two sailors gawked down in wonder, and they were not alone. Anamaria, Gibbs, and Jack had come up beside them and all five stared with varying degrees of worry and disbelief at the roiling water.

= = = = =

Norrington forced himself to breathe, and gagged as the water filled his lungs. Bubbles escaped his mouth as he coughed and choked, and he opened his eyes to the underwater world. Wavering rays of green and blue filled his vision and he hoped the light penetrated to the deep bottom of the natural harbor. 

Flickering silver fish regarded him curiously before darting away as Norrington slowly adjusted to his new environment. His eyes pierced the growing darkness and before long the bucket hit the sandy bottom. His worries were quickly relieved, for the sun’s light easily reached him. He looked about the dimity field of rocky sand to gain his bearings as his ears popped and the muffled sounds of the ocean filtered in.

He could hear distant waves slapping a far away shore with a raging power, and he could hear the moaning calls of underwater behemoths. He could even hear the faint rocking and creaking of the _Black Pearl_ somewhere away above him.

Around him, the buckets sat upon the sandy bottom, easily weighed down by the stones within and numbered with rough scratches from Norrington’s knife. James practiced his breathing before he set out in a widening circle from the anchor, the free bucket in hand. He didn’t have far to go, for the wreck was obvious. Twenty years of salt water had wrought its damage, eating away at the wood and canvas. Any poor metal would have become pitted with rust, but the good stuff: that would have survived. The _Cassiopeia_ lay in roughly two halves, its masts like great fallen trees, its canvas sails long gone; cannonballs littered the sand like a giant child’s forgotten marbles. Norrington’s bare feet crossed the sandy field before him and he entered the more easily accessible half of the ship where the hold was open to him like a gaping cave.

The small brigantine had once been a part of Kidd’s fleet, and it had been shot down after drunk sailors had bragged of their swag. Overhearing the boast, a rival pirate captain thought _Cassiopeia_ to be easy prey, but the boarding failed when fire reached the magazine. Now, the treasure was lost along with the men who had stolen it.

Silver coins shimmered in the sand at Norrington’s feet. He stooped and began to load the pail in his hand, as easily as a child collecting shells on the beach. He followed the trail to a splintering chest, where Spanish silver gleamed bright from the rays of the sun.

His dark hair waved eerily about his head like wispy seaweed and he still didn’t like breathing the water, but he applied himself to his task and when the pail was full, he dug in the sand where a point of metal gleamed. He unearthed a dagger. The blade was pitted by salt, but the hilts were encrusted with jewels finer than most he’d seen. The buoyancy of the water lightened the load of the bucket, and he wended his way back to the _Pearl_ ’s anchor. He searched the tethered buckets for the first and carefully transferred the treasure into it after removing the weighing stones, letting the coins filter around the dagger standing along one side. His timing was good, for as soon as he turned away with the empty pail, the rope pulled taut and the bucket slowly rose up above his head as Marty and Cotton heaved hand over hand.

He made several more trips with the silver coins, mixing in other prizes when he found them: pearl necklaces, gold crosses, diamond fillets, and silver stripped from the screens of Spanish churches. He found mostly shillings, Spanish reales, and uneven, colonial-minted cobs, but there were also rare doubloons: perfectly formed, stamped, and weighted gold coins from Spain. In the last bucket, he placed statuettes from India and a German stein enameled in silver, a solid copper plate from Greece, and a stone-carved icon from Portugal. 

Lastly, he loaded up the free bucket he’d been using to transport the treasure. In it, he poured the contents of a worthless tin box: a cascade of pearls that shimmered opalescent and white. Most were small and ill formed, but strung together would make beautiful jewelry. As he was pouring them out and they fell slowly through the water into the bucket, something flashing and dark caught Norrington’s eye. He plunged his hand into the pail and pulled out a black pearl, perfectly round and the color of tarnished silver. The size of a musket ball, it glowed eerily in the underwater light and he carefully pocketed it.

The bucket was loaded with more treasure until gold coins were spilling from its rim, and a silver and sapphire necklace hung from his neck as James held onto the last rope and let himself be hauled aboard with the rest of the booty.

He coughed violently when he broke the surface. He let go of the rope, and flailed for the ladder built into the ship’s hull, scrabbling aboard with the last pail in hand. He shoved it to the deck, where eager hands quickly snatched it away.

He clung to the side of the ship like a baby bird to a wind-shaken branch, coughing up lungfuls of water as more of the stuff dribbled from his ears and nose.

Cheers from the men vaguely registered but he could not find a good enough grip to drag himself onto the deck.  
 Then a hand found his and he was heaved up. Another hand dug under his armpit, and more grasped his biceps.

He sank gratefully to the deck and hacked up the last of the water as someone pounded his back. “I bloody hate doing that…” His voice was wet and choked, but easily understood.

The crew laughed, and Anamaria’s fair voice blended sweetly with the men’s. Norrington finally realized someone was hovering close around him and he looked up, blinking away the salt to find Jack grinning widely at him. “What you promise you sure do deliver, mate. Now, rest for you, I think.” His hands slipped on wet skin, but James was finally dragged to his feet and guided to the cabin.

He was grateful for the cool dark of it and stripped naked but for the silver necklace hung with the sapphire pendant that fell mid-chest. James dug in the pocket of his sopping breeches, oblivious of Jack’s hot gaze. “I’ve got something for you, Jack.”

“Oh?” He sounded eager, but the lustful leer became a soft ‘oh’ of surprise when James opened his hand, revealing the prize there. “For me?”

“Who would appreciate a black pearl better than you, Jack?”

“Good point,” the pirate agreed, deftly picking up the stone in two quick fingers. He held the thing up to the light that slanted into the windows. “You’ve a good eye, to find this,” he wondered.

“Wait till you see what’s in the rest of the buckets.”

“Shut up and kiss me already, my angel.”

Though surprised at the endearment, Norrington readily returned Jack’s slithering embrace. “Are you… _very_ unwell?” the captain’s rough voice wanted to know.

“What do you have in mind?” James asked. 

Jack whispered ardently in his ear. James laughed and said, “Give me a few minutes to recover and you can do it twice if you like.”

= = = = =

The _Black Pearl_ returned to the dock and the men made merry, promising as best they could that they wouldn’t tell tales of their Jim and their new treasure as they poured coins and gems and strips of silver into pockets and pouches under Gibbs’s watchful eye.

Alone in the cabin, Jack and James reveled in the continuing thrill of skin on skin.

When night fell, everyone slept, and when the sun rose, those that were sober resumed their work.

In the morning, or as close as Jack ever came to it, the _Pearl_ ’s Captain dug a rolled piece of leather out of a trunk and unwrapped it to reveal a variety of tools: lock picks, needles, pins, shivs, scissors, tweezers, and a variety of unidentifiable implements that had once belonged to jewelers, watch-makers, milliners, and navigators.

Norrington lazed naked in bed and watched Jack drill a precise and careful hole through the black pearl. The pirate blew through it to clear the debris, and pulled forward a random length of unadorned hair. He sucked the tip of the dreadlock into a point and slipped the pearl onto it with some difficulty. Lastly, he teased and ruffled the saliva-wet hair and tied a knot into it to keep the trinket in place. “My most treasured bauble.”

James smiled gently, doubting. “I don’t know if I believe that.”

“Oh?”

A lazy gesture indicated Jack’s ornamented head. “You’ve quite a few trifles arrayed on your person. You wouldn’t wear them, I think, if they meant nothing.”

“Yes, as you say… many trifles, and now: one treasure.” He fingered the pearl suggestively and waggled black eyebrows.

James couldn’t hold back the quirking smile, and they slowly dressed, a process interspersed by kisses and flirtatious jibes.

The previous day, the men had gone through the buckets and as quartermaster, Gibbs had divvied up the loot as best he could, but the finest and most unique pieces had been set aside for their captain. One of Norrington’s buckets had been placed just within the doors to the cabin, and now the pair of men arrayed the pieces one by one on the table, examining each, deciding what might be kept, what sold, and what traded. Jack dragged a trunk across the black deck and he carefully wrapped in rags a few choice pieces: the Grecian plate, German stein, and a gold image of Buddha. “For John Rackham. I owe him.”

“I’m worth a copper plate and a silver tankard?”

“ _And_ ,” Jack stressed the word, “a gold statuette… of a fat little man.”

James let slip another smile. “That’s Buddha.”

“I _know_ it’s… Boo-dah.”

Smiling, Norrington held up a fine treasure: a heavy jade ornament shaped like an elephant inlaid with silver and encrusted with emeralds. “What about this?”

“I like that one,” Jack said. “It’s mine.” He grabbed the thing up and secreted it away somewhere. “And you?” he asked, picking up the silver and sapphire necklace. “You should keep this one.” He swaggered over and draped the thing around James’s neck.

Norrington looked down at his own chest where the jewel rested, shining and heavy, over his plain shirt. “It means nothing to me,” he said.

“I like it on you.”

James laughed and said, “Then it means the world. Let’s get breakfast.”

= = = = = =

Two weeks later, they were ready to sail again.

As they weighed anchor and pointed the ship to the open sea, James and Jack stood together at the wheel, and they felt the _Pearl_ pitch underfoot, eager to carve her wake through the white-capped waves once more.

The new colors flapped and whipped in the wind. The men sang of whiskey and women as they heaved the sails into place.

“Where are we going?” Even though they stood side by side, James had to shout to be heard over the wind. 

“Spanish trading route! You ever sacked a ship before?”

“Yes.”

“What?”

“Well, before I was in the Navy, obviously.”

Jack grinned widely. “And when was that?”

“You’re reaching again.”

“Yeah, well, eventually ye’ll tell me.”

“You think so?”

“Told me yerself you would.”

“I did, didn’t I? …It was a long time ago.”

Jack glared.

“I was a Viking.”

Jack grabbed the nearest crewman, gave him the wheel, and dragged Norrington in a clatter down the steps into the privacy of the cabin.

“A Viking.”

“Yes.”

When Norrington offered no more, Jack jumped up, clanked across the cabin, and returned with an oddly shaped bottle of rum, which he uncorked and drank from before handing it over, no doubt intended as encouragement.

Leery, James accepted the offer, but he only held the bottle in two strong hands and looked out the window at the sunlight skittering over the whitecaps. “By my best guess, I was born in spring, around the year 960.”

Jack’s harsh intake of breath disturbed the story for only a moment. “When I was ten or thereabouts, the Northmen came. They killed most of the people in our little seaside village. Some of the young women they took for themselves, and some of the boys too, who looked strong, to work the ships.” Norrington spoke in a matter-of-fact air, and wondered if he would be believed.

Somewhat to his surprise therefore, Sparrow asked, “Didn’t you hate them?”

Norrington shook his head. “No. I feared them too much. Besides, the ones who learned to hate were killed.” He finally took a swig from the bottle. “Times were different then.” He exhaled in a cynical laugh. “Ha! And exactly the same. One of the men – for all purposes – adopted me. I learned their language quickly and did as I was told. Five years later, I was a party to attacks upon my own people: setting fire to little hamlets with nothing to offer, and stealing fishing boats only to burn them and take what little food there was onboard. I took what I could, gambled mercilessly, prayed to new gods just as I’d once prayed to my old ones, and did every black thing they taught me. I murdered children, I raped women, I tortured men.” 

Tears came easily to bright green eyes, but his voice did not betray the sudden emotion. “I— Then, I joined the traders of Scandinavia. They weren’t… they weren’t like the Danes. I learned more of navigation and exploration than I ever had aboard pirating vessels. Those long, elegantly curving ships carried me down the Volga and the Dnepr. I saw Kiev, Novgorod; I saw the Vikings that made up the elite guardsmen of the Byzantine emperors in Constantinople. I sailed the North Sea, the Baltic… I saw the foundation of Dublin and of Wicklow. I helped them conquer Sicily and England. I settled for a time in Iceland. And I remembered with horror my earliest days aboard the Viking pirate ship, when it seemed all the world was too cruel to live in… when murderers took their victims’ daughters as wives and sons as their own.”

Feeling that something was missing, unconnected, Jack leaned in and asked, “You joined the traders? Just like that?”

Norrington audibly swallowed and cleared his throat, unsurprised that Sparrow knew just where to strike. “When I was eighteen, and we were somewhere on the northwest coast of what would become England, I joined the others in their wickedness and I had…I had taken a woman for myself in a black night ruled by orange fire… I bent her over a trough and I just… I took her, like an animal. It was not the first time… but, when I was done, she turned to look at me… through hanks of her long brown hair…”

Tears streamed down his face now and Norrington’s façade of indifference crumbled under the weight of what he had done so very long ago. “She was my cousin. We’d played together as children; she’d been like a sister to me and… when she saw my face… she just screamed and screamed, even though she’d been silent all the moments before…

“That was when I abandoned those cruel men for the traders and explorers. The Norwegian adventurers were not needlessly base and vile as the Danes had been, as I had been… but no matter what I did, who I fought or fought for, nothing erased those sins of mine, the deeds I’d done, the crimes I’d committed. And I thought: once, I was a boy who feared death, and now, I am a monster who gives it.” He wept all the more and drank the rum like a sick man guzzles water.

His voice too strained to be much more than a whisper, James went on, “After passing through the hinterlands of Russia and after taking the wheat fields and olive orchards of Sicily, it seemed I was always going north. North to the Sea, to the green islands there, and then further, to places of snow that were so desolate a man had to…”

Then, as a leaking bellows, the breath drifted out of him, and Norrington was nothing more than a boneless lump attached to a bottle, sitting formless and ragged on the narrow bunk. The sun shone, it was true, but that hour was a very dark one.

Jack sat beside him, dark eyes sad and knowing. The pirate said nothing, but his itching, twitching hands snuck around to steal away the bottle and replace it with a friendly grip. He grasped Norrington’s tan hand in his darker one and squeezed, while a face normally composed in careful arrangement revealed a certain empathy only men such as themselves could ever know, but times were never truly good, and too many men were prone to those sins with which both Norrington and Sparrow were overly familiar.

The men were quiet, though the world spun busy and loud around them. Waves slapped the hull, gulls cried alongside the ship, men sang and shouted above them as their naked feet stamped the deck. The Pearl swayed side to side and the boards continually creaked and groaned as the lanterns and glittering decorations clinked and chimed in the motion.

Slow and steady, Jack leaned forward and kissed the wet cheeks before him. “Why do tears taste like the sea?” he asked.

“How can you kiss me?”

Jack smiled for the first time since the beginning of the confession. “Because you are a good man.”

James almost smiled in response. When he tentatively opened his arms, Jack turned away and laid back into the embrace, his bedraggled head resting on a strong shoulder. James fondled that black hair and the black pearl nestled there before he stroked Jack’s neck and collarbone. “Tears do taste like the sea… Yes. Don’t you know why, Jack?”

“No.” He plucked idly at Norrington’s loose breeches. “Tell me.”

Shifting into a more comfortable position, James tightened his hold and kissed Jack’s temple over the fading bandana. “A long time ago, when the earth was flat and there were no oceans, the Great Being came to the many peoples of the earth and He told them, ‘The world is changing. The world will grow, and if you do not grow with it, all the world will be covered with your sorrows.’ The people listened, but many did not understand, and those who did quickly forgot, because it seemed that the world had been the same for such a long time, and there was no chance for any great change to befall them. The Great Being saw that the many peoples of the world were ignorant and idle, and He came unto all of them again and He said, ‘I have warned you once and will not do so again after this. Change with the world, or drown in your own sorrows.’ But even the people who heard did not understand. And lo, the world did change. It grew round and heavy and solid, and the many peoples met, but they met in fear and hatred of one another, and because of this, there grew a terrible thing, a thing so horrible even the Great Being wept. The Great Being wept, the people wept, and all the world was flooded with their tears. So the oceans grew up between the peoples, and the whole of the round world was covered in their sorrows. Because War had come to the many peoples, and the Great Being could not help them, and the world’s oceans grew monstrous, and forever tasted of tears.”

James gazed out the window to the waves and did not realize Jack was crying until a sun-darkened hand flittered up to wipe away the tears. “I don’t usually cry…”

“Neither do I,” James whispered, his gaze growing distant, green eyes unfocused and shadowed. Visions of a near-forgotten childhood haunted him and he whispered to the seashell of Jack’s curving ear. “Death does not scare me anymore, Jack. I would welcome it, welcome it above all things.”

Hurt, Jack frowned and pulled away to face his companion once more. His eyes were hard. “That’s how it is, eh? What am I, then?”

“You? A man. Unlike any other, granted. But before long, you’ll cause me more pain than I should ever have imagined.”

“Oh? You think I’ll leave you?”

“You will,” James agreed. 

Jack finally caught on. “Oh. Oh!” The dark eyes softened. “I suppose you’re used to that, eh? People leaving…”

“People leave me every day, Jack. But turning your body over to the sea… that will be a harder thing than I have done in many a long year. I warned you about loving.” He laughed, quiet and bitter. “I should have warned myself.”

= = = = =

“Sails!”

Jack and James raced one another to the deck, where they sprinted to the starboard gunwale. Sparrow patted his pocket and looked around in bewilderment. “Where’s me bring’em’near?”

Gibbs handed over the telescope and Jack adjusted it, fighting the ocean swells to focus on the distant ship. But when he slowly lowered it, a frown marred his oddly handsome features. “Stay ‘way from that ‘un.” He looked sideways at James and muttered, “Slave ship.”

Men who overheard shivered as though cold and quickly returned to their duties. Anamaria stood silent beside her Captain. Gibbs backed nervously away, seeking solace with the rum.

James grimaced and stared at the ship. Its vile stench carried even over the open water, and he turned firmly away.

= = = = =

Two days later, Jack sighted a ship of the Spanish fleet, and he called every man to arms, and they chased the frigate down, proud colors flying high under the hot sun as the blue Atlantic cradled the feisty pirate ship.

At the sight of the pirate vessel, the Spanish surrendered at once. Jack spoke enough Spanish to negotiate and his men soon loaded the _Pearl_ with food and spices and medicine until the hold was overflowing. Norrington did his part without complaint, though he stayed on the black ship and moved the goods to the hold rather than taking part in the boarding.

The pirates left the frigate intact but disabled, and not a single man aboard was harmed, though three of the sailors chose to go on the account under Jack’s command, rather than remain aboard the _Contessa_. 

But despite their plunder and Sparrow’s continuous swagger and the carousing of the men that night, there was something about Jack that was off. Anamaria asked him and Gibbs asked him, but Jack would say nothing, though all aboard the _Pearl_ could see he wasn’t himself, and wondered what that promised for their Captain, their ship, and their livelihood.

In the night, Jack stood grim under the moon’s pale, half-hearted light with James beside him. The former Commodore scuffed his boot on the decking and looked up to the perilous stars as he said, “I’ve done you some ill and you won’t tell me what it is.”

“You’ve done me no ill, Jim,” Jack said, taken aback. He perked up a bit as James spoke to him and he turned to one side, leaning his elbow on the rail. “But you do get a man thinkin’.”

Norrington tried to hide his smirk, turning away from the dubious light of the night sky. “Shiver me timbers,” he muttered, “it was never my intention to get Jack Sparrow thinking… I can’t help but wonder it must not bode well for the rest of us.”

Jack’s pink tongue peeked out from between his lips as he thought and regarded the man next to him. “Can’t say about others for sure. You should know by now, I most always be thinkin’ abou’ myself.”

James gently kicked him, knowing it to be only half a lie. “So what have I got you thinking about yourself?”

A lusty, sidelong glance covered whatever truth Jack might have spoke. “I’m thinkin’… you’re a good man. And a good man to have around.”

James denied this, shaking his head. “No. Gibbs was right. You should have dumped me over the side. It’s bad luck, Jack, to have a dead man onboard.”

“But y’see,” Jack said excitedly, bopping about in front of him, “that’s jus’ it, mate! You aren’t dead.” He listed forward then, and aborted the kiss just in time. “You’re the most alive I’ve ever seen a man.”

James cracked a hesitant smile before he turned away and slunk into the night shadows of the dark ship.

Jack squinted, watching him depart. He wasn’t finished; he could chase the man down. But where would he go on a ship, after all?

Instead, Jack stalked the width and breadth of the _Black Pearl_ over and over, harassing the men, teasing the newest recruits, and drinking rum wherever he found it.

Bed called, he knew, but the stars shone overhead and the wind was still strong, and the _Pearl_ coursed underfoot with all the wild abandon of a Mustang stallion over American plains.

One dogwatch was traded for another, and still he did not sleep. He held the jerking wheel in strong hands and his dark eyes pierced the horizon, a barely discernible line wavering where the gray of the night sky hovered over the black of the night ocean.

When the majority of the night had passed by and false dawn loomed imminent in the eastern sky, Jack passed the wheel to a newly risen Anamaria and stomped down the steps to wander the deck once more.

Jack paused when he heard a low rumble in the night, unsure at first what it might be. He pursed his lips and followed the sound. James Norrington lounged out of sight behind barrels of Indian spices, the oddly thrilling tone issuing from salted lips.

“What are ye singin’ there, James?”

Silence fell and the man regarded him warily, bright eyes peering through ratty brown hair, before gesturing that Jack might join him in the confines of the space, hidden from prying eyes, but almost comfortable amid the mess of canvas and rope. Jack settled himself there, as easily as a bird perching upon a taut line, sitting shoulder to shoulder with his lover and regarding him curiously.

Norrington turned his fierce gaze to the night-blackened sea visible through the wide scuppers. “When I was boy, I loved everything around me. But there was something I feared, beyond all reason and sense, something I feared so utterly that – when I thought upon it in the dark of the night – I could have sworn it smothered me with the terror, with the mere thought of it.”

“Death.”

“Yes. Death alone in my world terrified me. Even young as I was: six, no more than seven. The thought of it choked me. And living in those times-- any times... death was everywhere. In the beasts of the field and the chickens in the pen, in the family both old and young that died around me.”

When Norrington paused, Jack waited politely, as if he should enjoy nothing better than morose company and an endless interval of silence.

“I loved everything else though: feeding the animals, thatching the roof, fetching and carrying and all the little things. Birthing the lambs and watching the kittens rolling about… I adopted one, one that the mother had neglected as too small. I fed it milk drop by drop from my finger until she grew strong and hale. And at night, all the children in the place would sit by the hearth and listen to my grandmother tell stories. Ancient, crazy tales she told us, stories to frighten us out of our wits or make our fancy take flight. There was an old song she used to sing.” James shook his head and looked away. “She was a right smart old biddy. She knew me, knew me front to back and inside out. I outright asked her how it was I could escape death. At seven, it seems the old are ancient and must know all.” He shook his head again, a grim smile. “It wasn’t until several years later when she took a bad fall and lay dying that she sent for me. She bid the healer leave us alone, and she told me something that has haunted me for the rest of my days.”

“Aye? And what was it, James?”

“Twinkle, twinkle, little star,  
How I wonder what you are.  
Up above the world so high,  
Like a diamond in the sky.  
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,   
How I wonder what you are.” 

He did not sing, but his voice was low and cadenced, lending the old rhyme an ancient solidarity as well as a new, haunting aspect of darkness.

“I’ve ‘eard that old song,” Jack said, disappointed. “Me Ma sang it to me when I was a wee one.” He sang, rough and off-key, but oddly pleasant to hear:

“When the blazing sun is gone,  
When he nothing shines upon,  
Then you show your little light,  
Twinkle, twinkle, all the night.  
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,  
How I wonder what you are.

Norrington stared at him. “You haven’t heard the rest of it,” he ventured.

Jack blinked. “No.”

Norrington’s deep voice resonated again, not piercing the night air, but blending with it in a lonely joining.

“Then the traveler in the dark  
Thanks you for your tiny spark;  
He could not see which way to go,  
If you did not twinkle so.  
Twinkle, twinkle, little star,  
How I wonder what you are.

“Twinkle, twinkle northern lights  
Shimmer in the arctic night  
Up above the clouds so high  
Green blue ribbons in the sky  
Twinkle, twinkle northern lights  
Sparkle in my dreams tonight.

“Each man dies, strong or stout  
And every candle is snuffed out  
But even after rising dawn  
Each lonely star lingers on,  
Twinkle, twinkle in the sky  
As the years roll swiftly by.

“If a man could be a star  
And live that lonely life afar,  
A man should live forever, aye  
Until the blazing sun should die.  
Twinkle, twinkle, little soul,  
Go unto the northern pole.

“Go unto the northern lights  
Keep those ribbons in your sights  
When day’s no more and night’s forever,  
Chill the wind and hell the weather,  
Then the traveler in the dark  
Searches for the lonely spark.

“Though the moon waxes, wanes,  
The eternal stars never change.  
Yes, they burn a rushing rage  
Year to year, and age by age  
Until the night they fall and die—  
Twinkle, twinkle from the sky.

“Catch a falling star that night,  
Keep it fast and hold it tight,  
Let the fervor burn no higher:  
Swallow down the misty fire.  
Then the traveler in the dark  
Becomes the lonely, lively spark.

“Twinkle, twinkle little soul  
Friendless at the northern pole  
Up atop the world so high  
Daunting, dreamy as the sky  
Eternal now the traveler’s soul  
But what can ever make you whole?”

Silence fell until the last memory of melody faded and the men were left with nothing but the lash of the waves against the hull and shuddering snap of the sails.

“So le’ me get this straight. In the middle of winter, you went as far north as you could go, caught a falling star, _ate it_ … an’ now you live forever?”

“Not as pretty as the song, is it?” Norrington asked, a crazy light in his roguish grin. “You make it sound simple! You, a mortal man, have to sail a ship to the northern limits, until ice stops up the hull. Then, you need to find a way to live on the arctic floes, where there is nothing but ice and snow and wind. You have to find your way straight north, without seeing the sun for weeks, just following that damn Dog Star like a dog yourself. And if you can make it to the top of the world without dying or going mad, you have to wait for the northern lights to show themselves on the shortest day of the year, and then you have to pray to whatever god you choose to believe in that the stars will fall that night. And if you’ve any life and energy left in you after all of that, you’ve got to chase the damn thing down and catch it!” The fire bled out of Norrington like water drained from a trough. “And if it doesn’t set you afire, or blind you, or chase you into insanity, you’ve got to force the living thing into your mouth and work your throat to swallow.” He shook his head. “And then, of all fool things, you live forever.”

“That would be a great adventure,” Jack muttered.

“If you think it’s anything but a curse, you’re daft as I’ve always said.”

Together, they looked out at the sea, and Jack rested his dark head on Norrington’s slumping shoulder. His black braids and dreadlocks teased the skin that was bared at the open neck of James’s shirt.

Jack’s voice was low and almost tremulous as the sun’s first light breached the horizon. “You chose this gift for the wrong reasons, y’know. You don’t do this because you fear death—”

“I know; I learned that too late.”

Sparrow looked up then and met cautious green eyes. “You ‘ave t’do it because ye love to live. And James… I love livin’.”

Finally understanding, James slowly shook his head. “No.”

**Author's Note:**

> This story has become a monster; I started writing it in 2007. You'll notice that was a while ago. I'm posting the first few chapters in hopes that people will tell me what they think of it and if it's worth finishing. 
> 
> I kind of drifted away from writing it a while ago, thinking it was getting too weird and people wouldn't like it. 
> 
> (Not only that, but Jack Sparrow is incredibly difficult to write and I give high praise to any author who can accomplish it. I find my portrayal of his character at least acceptable, but I can't say it's spot-on.)


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